


V 










1^^ 
^-^ 
•^ 





















^"^ 
^ 






^** . ♦^ 

















REINDEER-LAND 

(ARCTIC SKETCHES) 



Vibrate af tbe Great TRUotld 
•Wo, 2 



LIBRARY OF THE GREAT WORLD 

COMPRISING ORIGINAL VOLUMES OF 

Ibletoc^, :©iogtapbs, Science, G^ravel, Etc, 

/n cloth and morocco^ with frontispiece. Published 

for subscribers at 30 cents in cloth^ and 

4S cents in morocco. 

EDITED BY 

A. VAN DOREN HONEYMAN 



BOOKS ISSUED. 

THE AZTECS. By The Editor. 
REINDEER-IvAND. By The Editor. 

SUCCEEDING VOLUMES: 

THE I.AND OF DYKES (Holland). By Prof. 

J. A. Mets. 
HOW THE WORLD WAS MADE. By Wm. H. 

IvARRABEE, I^Iv. D. 
THE PATAGONIANS, (Indian Races). 
VOYAGES TO THE NORTH POI.E. 
THE ROOF-COUNTRY (Thibet). 
Etc., Etc., Etc. 

[Order of publication of above not certain.] 



Xfbrars of tbe Great Morl^ 



Reindeer-Land 



(ARCTIC SKETCHES) 



U^- BY 

A. VAN DOREN HONEYMAN 

'Author of "Bright Days" Books 




©lainfielD, flew Scxec^ 
Ibonei^man & flonipani? 

1905 



UBRARY of COf^ei^ESS 
Two Copies rtuctMved 

APR 24 iyU5 

' COPY B. 






THE CHAPTERS. 

L The Country and How to Reach It i 

II. Inhabitants of Reindeer-IvAnd 26 

III. More About the Country 61 

IV. Their Treasure of Treasures 72 

V. Strange Phenomena 87 

VL C0NCI.US10N 96 



Copyright, 1905, by 
HoNEYMAN & Company 

Published April 9, 1905 



" Not such the sons of Lapland; wisely they 
Despise th' insensate, barbarous trade of war; 
They ask no more than simple Nature gives." 

—Thomson's "Seasons.' 



REINDEER-LAND 



CHAPTER I. 
The Country and How to Reach It. 

Preliminary Word. — In the long winter even- 
ings, by the light of blazing logs, many of our 
good old grandparents in England and America 
used to sit and tell the story of how a curious 
race of men, of low stature and sturdy physique, 
covered from head to foot with warm skins, in 
the land of perpetual night, but under the 
strange light of the aurora borealis and of the 
brilliant stars, went hither and yon with the 
speed of the wind, in low and peculiar sledges, 
pulled by swift-going, antlered little animals 
known as '^reindeer.'' One could picture the 
whole scene, and wish he were in it and part of 
it. The smaller boys and girls would huddle 
closer to grandfather's knee as he told how the 
pick of these curious coursers would somehow 
(5) 



6 REINDEER-LAND 

fall into the hands of good Saint Nicholas just 
before Christmas, and on Christmas Eve, with 
bells on the reindeer and gifts on the sleigh, and 
on the Saint's back beside, he would drive furi- 
ously from housetop to housetop, not in Lapland, 
but where English-speaking children lived. Jump- 
ing out of his overloaded vehicle, and shaking the 
snow from his garments, he would drop down 
through the chimney, deposit some of his stores in 
the stockings or around the fireplace, return to his 
reindeer, and be off with a "clatter.'' The little 
folks knew all the story, and it was as vivid as an 
actual scene upon the stage, or in real life. They 
knew the '^eight tiny reindeer" came from the 
far, frozen North, and went hither and yon "in 
a twinkling;" yet no eyes had been awake at the 
right hour of the year before to see those reindeer, 
or to catch Saint Nick in the act of calling 
out: 

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen! 
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on Dnnder and Blixon! " 

The basis for all such fireside stories was not 
unreal, aod especially was it a true tale of Rein- 
deer-land that the old folks endeavored to relate. 
Yet how little they knew of what we know, to- 
day, from actual travelers and from books, of the 
great North Country, where there is in summer 
unending day, and in winter perpetual night, and 
where the people we now call Laplanders spend 
their whole lives watching over and caring for 
the gentle animals that are so famous in the 
Christmas story; animals that are to their mas- 
ters food and clothing, meat and drink, thread 



REINDEER-LAND 7 

and bed, horse and cow; everything, in fact, 
except wife and child. Then no American had 
been to that country, unless by some strange acci- 
dent, much less had written books about it. It 
seemed to be a land so far away that the line be- 
tween the real and the ideal was as shadowy as a 
dream. To-day all this is changed. As Africa is 
no longer a Dark Continent, but has been tra- 
versed from end to end ; as strange, old, heathen 
China is an ''open door'' to all the world; as the 
islands of the South Seas are visited every year 
by curious travelers from m.any civilized parts, so 
Reindeer-land is, to-day, a practical country to 
look at and describe. It is on the map, with riv- 
ers, lakes, mountains, marshes, encampments ; and 
we know almost to a certainty how many people 
"of low stature" live there, and how they live, 
how many reindeer they have, and all about their 
domestic health and wealth. 

Many years ago, and yet not so many as mod- 
ern history would count — just a trifle more than 
thirty 3^ears to be exact — the writer was on his 
way to England for the first time. On the vessel 
was a judge from a western city, with his wife 
and two daughters. An acquaintance sprang up 
which led to the statement from the judge that 
he was bound for the Arctic land, to observe 
at close range the habits of the reindeer. ''Wrap- 
ped in seclusion,'' was the way in which he refer- 
red to the north of Norway and Sweden. "We 
have been told," he afterward wrote in a book, 
"that they" (the people of that land) "have a 
mountainous, rugged country, reaching far into 



8 REINDEER-LAND 

the Arctic Circle . . . extending much nearer 
to the Pole than civilization has elsewhere 
reached ; but of all this we have but shadows and 
glimpses, which interest but do not satisfy.'* He 
had been informed that the caribou of North 
America and the reindeer of Lapland were of the 
same general family of deer, and he desired to 
investigate the facts. He had already familiarized 
himself with the former in Canada, and now de- 
sired to see these near-cousins to the caribou in 
Europe, and to ascertain, if possible, why the 
European animal was domesticated and of such 
permanent utility to thousands of people, while 
American stock was allowed to run wild, and was 
only valued by the huntsmen for its antlers and 
meat. 

As he talked about the subject day after day, it 
whet one's curiosit)^ to the core. It seemed like a 
journey to a land of mysteries; for it was true 
then that Norway and Sweden were not only off 
the beaten routes of travel, but few knew how to 
get there. The judge was a man of wide reading 
and of considerable scientific attainments, and yet 
he could not tell, with any certainty, how he 
might reach the country of his desires from Lon- 
don. He was actually biding the time when he 
should land on English soil to ascertain "whether 
steamers sailed from England around the North 
Sea, and into the White Sea to Archangel,*' or 
whether he must needs get approximately to the 
North Cape by crossing from Scotland to Den- 
mark or to Middle Norway, and then coasting 
northward from place to place until he passed be- 



REINDEER-LAND § 

yond the Arctic Circle. Guide-books gave him 
no reliable assistance. As a matter of fact, when 
he reached London, as he afterward wrote, he 
"spent two days of diligent inquiry there with- 
out success. I visited,*' said he, "the ofSces of 
Cook, Bradshaw and Murray, but they could add 
nothing to my stock of information." 

All of which is referred to, to show what 
changes the third-of-a-century that has elapsed 
since the event narrated above has brought about. 
Now the routes by which one may reach the Arctic 
Circle and go far beyond are not over-numerous, 
it is true,' but they are known to thousands of 
tourists, who annually traverse them in compar- 
ative comfort. 

It was not the writer's good fortune to see the 
reindeer with the sagacious traveler who had so 
much trouble to get even to Norway, and this has 
been ever since a matter for regret. It was then 
supposed to be such a risky and tedious undertak- 
ing, that only a man who felt that scientific obli- 
gations, or insatiable curiosity, required the sacri- 
fice of all comfort and pleasure in traveling, could 
justify himself in leaving well-known routes for 
the pursuit of knowledge under such difficulties. 
In the end the judge had a charming trip, and 
he returned to write a book about it, that was as 
naive and delightful as the land itself of which it 
treated.^ 

Since that time, however, three visits to Nor- 
way and Sweden by the writer have opened the 
door to the satisfaction of a proper curiosity con- 
cerning the country and the denizens of that 



lo REINDEER-LAND 

Northland, who are still herding the reindeer in 
summer, and riding in their pulkas over miles of 
waste of snow in the dead of winter, and yet who 
are dying away, as a race, and, in the near cen- 
turies, may be wholly of the misty past. 

Where is Eeindeer-land ? — Not exactly coter- 
minous with Lapland, though approximately the 
two are one. Lapland is in the extreme north of 
Europe; everything in the shape of land on the 
continent of Europe above the Arctic Circle 
(which is at 66° 32' 30'' of north latitude) ; but 
including also some territory to the south of it, 
although few, indeed, are the tame reindeer to be 
found south of that Circle. Northern Russia, 
however, while considered to comprise some Lap- 
land country — and, indeed, on the map constitutes 
more than one-third of it — may be almost wholly 
eliminated from our ideas of Reindeer-land, be- 
cause the Russian Lapps do not own many herds 
of reindeer, and are not strictly nomads ; they do 
not roam about with these animals as do the 
Lapps of Sweden and Norway. Finland is, of 
course, a portion of Russia, but it is really a coun- 
try by itself, as we usually think of it, and it has 
an enormous number of reindeer. A census made 
some years ago would indicate that the acre- 
age,^ population of Lapps and number of reindeer 
were distributed throughout Lapland in about 
this wise: 

No. of 
Country. Extent. Lapp Pop. Reindeer. 

Russian-Lapland 61,654 3,000 4,200 

Finnish- Lapland 26,575 i>ooo 40,200 

Norwegian-Lapland 16,073 i7)078 101,768 

Swedish- Lapland 48,898 6,702 220,800 



REINDEER-LAND ii 

In other words, the Russian Lapps had less than 
two reindeer per inhabitant; the Norwegian 
Lapps not quite six per inhabitant; the Swedish 
Lapps about thirty-five per inhabitant; and the 
Finnish Lapps forty per inhabitant. The census 
is not recent, but it is probably substantially ac- 
curate now; enough so, at least, to enable us to 
determine what territory should be embraced 
under the term of Reindeer-land. 

It is to be noted, in considering the above cen- 
sus of reindeer, that Norway must be looked at 
in the light of the bulk of its reindeer herd rather 
than in their proportion to the total Lapp popula- 
tion in Norway. This is because Norway is a 
peculiar country geographically. A large num- 
ber of its Lapp inhabitants are forced, by the 
extent of the coldness and barrenness of the moun- 
tains, to seek a living by the sea, and the Coast 
Lapps are not those who trouble themselves much 
about the reindeer. They do not need to do so. 
They possess some, but are chiefly interested in 
fishing and barter. Considering only the Moun- 
tain Lapps of Norway, and that, spite of all the 
difficulties of a rocky and desolate country, they 
maintain one hundred thousand reindeer, which 
not only live but thrive among the glacier-cov- 
ered hills and bleak summits of the land, we must 
confess the animals of that country are brave lit- 
tle heroes, deserving of better monuments than 
the granite rocks and glaciers which cover the 
land with the garments of the Eternal. 

Norway, Sweden and Finland, or, rather, all of 
those countries above the Arctic Circle, make up, 



12 REINDEER-LAND 

then, the true Reindeer-land. In the whole it 
embraces a strip of territory from the Atlantic 
Ocean to the White Sea, extending to about five 
hundred miles east and west, with an average 
width of less than two hundred miles. 

Norwegian-Lapland is divided into two dis- 
tricts, for governmental purposes, Norrland and 
Finmark, the former name corresponding with the 
same name, "Norrland," in the northerly part of 
Sweden. Swedish Lapland is divided into five 
governmental districts. 

A Very Old Land. — Lapland is a very old land, 
and yet is one of the newest of all European 
lands. Old, because two thousand years ago, and 
probably long before, it was inhabited much as 
now by the same vigorous and unintellectual race, 
which carried on their lives by the side of reindeer 
herds, so far as we know, although the actual 
domestication of the deer may have been of much 
later date. The Lapps were certainly there when 
the oldest Scandinavian records appear, and cen- 
turies earlier. They are probably the same whom 
Tacitus, the Roman historian (55-117 A. D.) 
describes as "wild hunters, with skins for cloth- 
ing and rude huts as their only means of cover.'' 
Newest of lands, because the great ice covering 
that receded from central Europe, after man was 
upon the earth — the traces of which are still ex- 
tant as far south as Dresden — left the Scandina- 
vian peninsula last, and, when it finally vanished, 
it left behind huge boulders and an unfertile, be- 
cause cold, soil. It must have been comparatively 
late in the history of early Europe before 



REINDEER-LAND 13 

even so hardy a stock as the Lapp could venture 
to make it a permanent abode. When all the rest 
of the continent was inhabitable, Lapland was a 
most desolate and frigid country. It took the 
suns of centuries to sweeten it and fit it for the 
abode of even a low race of human beings. The 
reindeer was there first, contemporary with the 
mammoth and the bear ; the reindeer, indeed, had 
followed up the retreating ice from southern 
Europe; but the Lapp was not contemporary 
with all this trio. He was a later comer upon 
the scene, and the mammoth had then passed into 
history and oblivion. 

The Early Lapps. — Whence did the Lapps 
originate ? No one knows to a certainty, but 
there is scarcely a doubt that they are distant 
cousins to the Finns, who resemble them in divers 
ways, and that both the Lapps and the Finns 
came originally from the southeastern portion of 
Europe. The Finns are quite surely a part of 
those populations of the early ages which con- 
stituted the mixed stock in the neighborhood of 
the Ural Mountains in Russia, and it is believed 
to be certain that when the Lapps began their 
journey northward they went from Hungary, 
having previously gone there from the east. Grad- 
ually both Lapps and Finns were pushed north- 
ward by the Slavs and Huns. This may have 
been just before the Christian era, though pos- 
sibly som.e centuries earlier. The history of mid- 
Europe, before the day of Christ, has never been 
written, and the mystery of the distribution of 



14 REINDEER-LAND 

races into the far North Country may never be 
solved with historical precision. 

The Norwegians call all Lapps Finnerj and the 
two peoples, Lapps and Finns, have many habits 
in common, though there are important differ- 
ences due to the centuries that have intervened 
since the separation of the two lines of descend- 
ants from the original stock. The Lapps call 
themselves Samiy or Sahmelats; the general Fin- 
nish name for themselves is Snomelainerij mean- 
ing ''few people,'^ and it will be seen that the 
two designations may originally have been the 
same. No one has been able to say just what the 
term "Lapp" signifies, unless it be the same as 
'Tinn," (an imported name, not originally their 
own, as, in fact, the name 'Tapp" seems to be of 
foreign origin), the meaning of which, according 
to some, is 'Vizard;" or derived from 'Tenland" 
(a wet, boggy country), according to others. 
The term "Lapp" seems to have come into use in 
Europe about the Thirteenth Century. The Finns 
have a word "lapaan," meaning to float about, 
doubtless derived from the term Lapp. 

After Tacitus, who speaks of all Northmen 
as Fenni, the people are mentioned by Ohthere, the 
Norse Viking. Ohthere sailed around the North 
Cape and made a report of it to King Alfred the 
Great in the Ninth Century, and the king pub- 
lished an account of it. A Papal Bull of 1220 
mentions them under their modern name. The 
Norsemen gained ascendency over them in 1326, 
when, in concluding a treaty with Russia, they 
were given authority over all the people north of 



REINDEER-LAND 15 

the Gulf of Bothnia, from the Atlantic Ocean to 
the White Sea. In 1595 Sweden gained the 
right to impose dues on such of them as lived 
north of Sweden. 

From almost time immemorial, therefore, they 
have been defenseless subjects of foreign nations. 
To possess national independence, or set up rights 
of their own, seems never to have entered their 
heads; at least, they never made a fight to secure 
these supposed blessings, whether because too 
weak, too indolent, or too peaceful, does not 
clearly appear. Probably it was in large part 
because of their weakness in numbers and want 
of leadership, but more probably because they 
had no genius for organization. The Finns early 
formed a nation; the Lapps, so far as known, 
never pretended to be a nation. They preferred 
to be nomad gypsies, each for himself, and not 
even gypsies in the usual way of having a "chief." 

There is scarcely any description of Lapland 
in English writings prior to the middle of the 
Sixteenth Century. Then (1566) a voyager, 
named Serchthift, landed on the north coast of 
Norway, and published that he had found there a 
land called ''Lappia," inhabited by a 'Svild people, 
which neither know God nor yet good order ; and 
these people," he continued, ''live in tents made 
of deer-skin; and they have no certain habitation, 
but continue in herds and com.panies by one hun- 
dred or two hundred. And they are a people of 
small stature, and are clothed in deer-skin, and 
drink nothing but water, and eat no bread but 
flesh all raw." A pretty accurate description 



i6 REINDEER-LAND 

of the Lapp of to-day, except as to his drinking 
''nothing but water/' for he is a chronic imbiber 
of ardent spirits whenever he can get it. Con- 
tact with the English, after 1566, has not im- 
proved him in this regard. 

After all there has been no more attractive 
ancient or modern description of Lapland than 
Tacitus put into four short sentences. ''Beyond 
the land of the Suiones'' (the Swedes) said he, 
"is another sea'' (the Arctic,) "sluggish or almost 
stagnant, which we may believe girdles and en- 
closes the whole earth. For here the light of the 
setting sun lingers on till sunrise, bright enough 
to dim the light of the stars. More than that, it 
is asserted that the sound of his rising is to be 
heard and the forms of the gods and the glory 
round his head may be seen. Only thus far — and 
here rumor seems truth — does the world extend." 

How to Get to Lapland. — The usual way to 
reach Lapland from America is to go to Eng- 
land, and thence direct to Bergen — weekly steam- 
ers sail from Newcastle and from Hull — and so 
up the Norwegian coast by vessel to Hammerfest, 
the most northerly large town in the world, 
where one will come in contact with many of the 
native Lapps as traders. From Hammerfest 
northerly are to be found the Coast Lapps, an 
inferior order of the people, who do not compare 
in physique, manners, manliness or wealth with 
the Mountain Lapps. The latter are by far the 
more robust, the more intellectual, and in divers 
ways the superior of the Coast Lapps. 

Another way is to proceed to Stockholm and 



REINDEER-LAND 17 

thence to Helsingfors, Finland; and by steam- 
ers over the lakes and by two-wheeled carts over 
post-roads, the country of the Finnish Lapps may 
be reached, but with some difficulty. This is the 
most unusual point of access, which may pay for 
the novelty of it, if there be plenty of time to 
spare, and if one does not mind the gnats, dragon- 
flies and mosquitoes of the swampy region. 

Or, one may go from Stockholm by steamer, 
which runs several times v/eekly, to Tornea, at 
the head of the Gulf of Bothnia; or by rail from 
Stockholm to Lulea, sixty miles west of Tor- 
nea, and then reach Tornea by boat; and from 
that point enter Lapland, at about the division 
line between Sweden and Finland. Tornea is 
a small but important town of twelve hundred 
inhabitants, and is the rendezvous for Lapps in 
large numbers, who come there to sell reindeer 
horns, tongues and skins, or to barter them for 
silver, flour, clothing and whiskey. At this point, 
also, many travelers, principally Germans and 
Swedes, crowd the inns, especially on June 23 and 
24, when the Midnight Sun is partially visible, 
the town being situated approximately near the 
Arctic Circle. 

But the most up-to-date and easiest route, one 
so comfortable that it will surprise a traveler who 
has been anticipating deprivations in every part of 
Lapland, is to take the extremely modern "Lap- 
land Express" at Stockholm, and by it pass di- 
rectly through a portion of the Lapp country. 
This the writer did in 1904, and it was a route 
full of surprises and charms. Being an entirely 



1 8 REINDEER-LAND 

new route — at least for the last several hundred 
miles — It having been opened through to Narvik, 
on the Norwegian coast, only a year before — it 
has all the advantage of novelty, as well as of 
extreme comfort. A brief description of this rail- 
way journey may interest the reader. 

From Stockholm to Lapland. — The ''Lapland 
Express" is made up wholly of sleeping carriages 
of the most improved European pattern. A Pull- 
man train is supposed to be comfortable in its 
sleeping arrangements, but everyone who has 
used the Pullman understands that it is every- 
thing except satisfactory at night, when exclusive 
ness and quiet are desirable, and when all the 
''luxury" possible, not to speak of the decency of 
real isolation, is to be coveted. In this respect 
the first-class sleeping-coaches of Sweden, as of 
Germany, and for that matter of Russia, are 
incomparably superior to the American Pullman. 
They have air, roominess, isolation; they form 
the ideal sleeping-carriage. Each saloon-car- 
riage is made up of an aisle at the side, six large 
staterooms, whose sliding-doors open into the 
aisle, and a handsome observation room at each 
end. Each stateroom is for two persons only; 
or they can be separated by closing the folding- 
doors, so that each half will make an individual 
stateroom. These staterooms have all the requi- 
sites of a sleeping-room and of a day-room. They 
have a washstand, with running water, which, 
when closed, forms a writing desk, and plenty of 
places for the disposition of wraps and pack- 
ages. Large, double windows, of plate glass; 



REINDEER-LAND 19 

elegant woods and upholstering; good lights to 
.read by at night; electric bells, and easy chairs 
in the end rooms; these complete the parapher-. 
nalia. One carriage is a dining-car, where uni- 
formed attendants serve meals that will satisfy 
the most fastidious. The guards are courteous 
to a fault. 

The train runs at a speed of about thirty-five 
miles per hour for the first six hundred miles, 
and is watched for at the few way stations by 
hundreds of people, who go to these stations as 
late as midnight to see the train, which is yet 
looked at with curiosity. This special train-ser- 
vice is onl)^ scheduled to run two times per week 
each way in the summer. The total distance from 
Stockholm to Narvik is something over two thou- 
sand miles. The latter part of the journey is 
over a portion of Sweden where are long grades, 
and also over the back-bone of Norway, where 
are steep ascents and curves; consequently the 
train makes in the latter part of its journey not 
over twenty miles an hour. 

After Stockholm, the most important point to 
be seen is Upsala, the university city of Sweden, 
situated in a magnificent agricultural region, and 
in what is known as the heart of Old Sweden. 
Prior to reaching that town, the Mora Stones, 
where the Swedish kings were elected in olden 
times and received the honors of their vassals, 
are to be seen, if one chooses to visit them; but 
they are several miles to the west of the railway. 
Near by is the hamlet of Hammarby, where Lin- 
naeus (i707-'78), the famous botanist, lectured 



20 REINDEER-LAND 

to pupils who came there to hear him from all 
parts of Europe. Upsala has a population of 
twenty-four thousand, and contains not only the 
University of Sweden, founded in 1477, having 
nearly two thousand students, but a large and 
graceful Cathedral, begun in the middle of the 
Thirteenth Century. The spires of this Cathe- 
dral are visible for miles around. It also has an 
imposing castle, located upon high ground over- 
looking the town. One of the most interesting 
sights in the vicinity of Upsala is the spot, three 
miles distant to the north, where was formerly 
situated the Temple consecrated to Odin, chief 
of the Scandinavian gods. It is called Gamma 
Upsala (Old Upsala), and was the seat of the 
early pagan kings, whose three burial-mounds, 
or tumuli, named after the gods Thor, Odin and 
Freyr, are each about fifty-eight feet high and 
two hundred and twenty-five feet in diameter. 
They have been opened, and were found to con- 
tain calcined bones, funeral urns and other objects 
placed there at burial. 

The next important town is Sala, with a popu- 
lation of seven thousand, and possessing the chief 
silver mines of Sweden. Here, in the Fourteenth 
Century, most of the silver coined and used in 
Sweden was obtained. Beyond this point is a 
majestic river known as Dalalfven. We are now 
in the midst of the most famous of the Swedish 
provinces, known as Dalecarlia, or Dalarne, 
noted for the bright and variegated costumes of its 
peasants. 

*' He who that country once hath seen, 
He yearneth to ttp^/* 



REINDEER-LAND 21 

So runs an old Swedish ballad. Its population 
were the first to awaken after a sleep of ages, and 
to declare that Sweden must and should be free. 
It gave to Sweden Gustaf Vasa, the peasant son, 
who filled the throne of his country in 1523 and 
held it, with gallantry and honor, until 1560. He 
was grandfather of the better-known Gustavus 
Adolphus, who was king from 161 1-^32. Dalarne 
now contains over 200,000 souls, and is a duchy. 

We are now approaching the iron region, where 
there are blasting furnaces, sulphite and other 
manufacturies, and yet not out of the midst of 
cultivated regions. At Ockelbo, known as the 
gateway to the Norrland (Northland), there 
begins a country of virgin woods. What is called 
the Norrland is itself larger than the whole 
of the rest of Sweden. Originally covered from 
end to end with immense pine forests, there are 
still standing majestic trees fully five hundred 
years old. It has many rivers, having wild rapids 
and dashing waterfalls, all of them flowing east- 
ward to the Gulf of Bothnia. These rivers con- 
tain rich stores of salmon, and the whole region 
is one of exquisitely pure and healthful air. Alas ! 
the forests are yielding to the woodman^s axe for 
fuel and to meet the demand of great pulp mills, 
necessitated by the paper industry. Many of the 
English newspapers are now printed from paper 
made from the pulp of the forests of Sweden. 
Sparsely inhabited, it is still in the main a mighty 
wilderness. There are a few but not many roads 
through these forests, extremely beautiful in mid- 
summer, but far more so in midwinter, when the 



22 REINDEER-LAND 

trees are glittering with frost or white with snow, 
and when people travel on their sledges, under 
the unusual light of the brilliant stars and the 
aurora. 

We now follow rivers and pass various unim- 
portant stations, until we come to Bracke, where 
a branch line runs off to Trondhjem in Norway. 
From this point on the scenery is wild and deso- 
late and in places thoroughly grand. For the 
most part we traverse virgin forests, pass a large 
number of lakes, cross many rivers, and at last 
enter Lapland, near the station of Nasberg, where 
a large w^ooden board states that *Xappmarken," 
the name of the Lapp territory in North Sweden, 
begins. Within all the region north of this point 
the Lapps have a free country, where they may 
carry on their nomadic life at will. This portion 
of Lapland is full of grand waterfalls and magnif- 
icent lakes. We soon come to the Arctic Circle, 
and the next station of any note is Gellivara, 
where a halt is usually made in order to see the 
Midnight Sun, which can be observed on any 
clear night between the fifth of June and the 
eleventh of July. 

The writer spent a Sunday at Gellivara, but 
was not fortunate enough to see the Midnight 
Sun there, owing to a disagreeable rainstorm, fol- 
lowed by an abundance of clouds. Gellivara is a 
small settlement, quite modern, located upon a 
plain, which, being surrounded by mountains, does 
not give the sun-view desired; the latter is only 
obtained by climbing up to the top of a hill 
known as the Dundret, several miles distant, not 



. REINDEER-LAND 23 

an easy climb. No provisions are made for going 
to the top of the hill on horseback, and, therefore, 
Gellivara is not such a desirable place for tourists 
if the end in view be to view the sun. In the vi- 
cinity of Gellivara lies Malmberget, a town of 
over six thousand inhabitants, where is one of the 
richest deposits of iron ore in all Scandinavia. It 
has substantial houses of stone and regular streets, 
and gives to the mines about two thousand min- 
ers during the winter season. Electric works 
supply the motive power. The ore mined con- 
tains an average of sixty per cent, of pure iron. 
The place is reached by a branch railway line 
from Gellivara, betw^een four and five miles long. 
One wonders how it is possible for an intelli- 
gent and beautiful woman of another land to live 
all the long winter in this portion of the world 
and be content. The writer asked that ques- 
tion of such a lady — she was a German of fine 
mind and charming manners, who made her home 
in Lapland-Sweden — at Gellivara. "How is it 
possible,'' we inquired, "for you to be happy here, 
with no husband or brother, during the long night, 
when the snow is so deep and communication with 
the outside world is cut off indefinitely." Her 
prompt reply was: "The winter season is the 
most charming time for us all. I want to leave, 
if at all, in summer, but not in winter. We then 
have our social parties without end. It is true 
that there is no sunshine, but we consider our 
^evenings' the same as you do, from six to twelve, 
and enjoy ourselves royally. We have the rein- 
deer pulkas, and travel over the frozen snow under 



24 REINDEER-LAND 

the bright starlight to and fro, and it is the 
most merry season of the year. Now the valleys 
are bare; there is much rain and there is mud; 
the reindeer are in the mountains, and we cannot 
get about. By all means give me the Lapland 
winter and not the Lapland summer. '^ Much as 
this answer was a surprise, we believed it. It was 
dreary at Gellivara in mid- July. The days were 
long enough to be tiresome and the nights too 
short for proper sleep; we wished for one good 
dark night for rest. 

Leaving Gellivara, it is a wild and forlorn ride 
to Kiruna, nearly seventy miles to the west. The 
country is not only desolate but practically unin- 
habited, the trees stunted, and no cultivated lands 
are within sight. Here is the wild, original wil- 
derness, and when one suddenly comes out from 
it upon a flourishing town like Kiruna, having 
three thousand active people (not Lapps), he feels 
that some magic art must have called it into being. 
Amid dwarfed birches, mosses and mountain 
shrubs, there has sprung up a sprightly, prosper- 
ous settlement, all owing to its being another 
centre of iron deposits. 

It was at Kiruna where the Midnight Sun was 
seen in all its glory, a description of which will 
be given later. 

From Kiruna onward there are visible various 
small settlements of Lapps. Soon the snow-cap- 
ped peaks of Norway line up along the western 
horizon. We are now on a comparatively high 
elevation (1443 feet), and the way to Narvik 
on the Norwegian coast is through defiles in 



REINDEER-LAND 25 

mountains, where there are various lakes and 
mountain streams, deep valleys, and endless pic- 
tures of rocks and peaks. This portion of the 
ride will never be forgotten by the traveler. The 
acme of all, however, is reached when one of the 
fjords of Narvik, that penetrates many miles back 
to the mountain, the Rombakenfjord, appears in 
view, and from the higher level one descends to it 
by a succession of curves and tunnels. 

Narvik was formerly called ''Victoriahavn,'^ 
and is now a point from which small steamers 
may be taken to connect with the regular steam- 
ship lines between Trondhjem and the North 
Cape, which, however, do not touch at Narvik 
but at the Lofoten Islands. Narvik itself has a 
population of five thousand and is a wide-awake, 
up-to-date settlement, with rather deficient hotel 
accommodations, but a growing centre for freight 
vessels. Iron ore from Kiruna comes to Narvik, 
and is then sent off to the south, while the rail- 
way carries back into the country all kinds of 
stores, alike for Norwegians, Swedes and Lapps. 

The small boat that carries passengers out from 
Narvik to the Lofoten Islands, a journey occu- 
pying several hours, is unpleasant enough on a 
stormy day and on a rough sea, but delightful in 
fair weather. There was spread for us on the 
upper deck under the awning a table groaning 
with good things, but the rain was beating furi- 
ously and the deck ran with torrents of water. 
Ladies were driven by the rain and cold to the 
cabin, the stuffiness of which produced seasick- 
ness in not a few instances. At the Lofoten 



26 REINDEER-LAND 

Islands, reached about midnight, there was an inn, 
a quarter of a mile away from the water. On our 
arrival there the landlady was aroused so as to 
furnish tea for her guests, and, although the con- 
necting boat failed to arrive until three o'clock in 
the morning, the courtesy of the lady and her 
attendant was not soon forgotten. It is needless 
to say that the summer trip between the Lofoten 
Islands and Trondhjem, or, for that matter, be- 
tween the North Cape and Trondhjem, in either 
direction, is fraught with a number of discomforts. 
Three times as many people crowd the boats as 
they are intended to carry, and in our case a ter- 
rific storm of rain and wind added to the usual 
discomforts and made it a terrible passage to reach 
Trondhjem. 



CHAPTER IL 
Inhabitants of Reindeer-land. 

Appearance of the Lapps. — At Gellivara, and 
similar towns in the portion of Lapland following 
the railway route, the Lapps come less frequently 
in summer than in winter, and sometimes are not 
to be seen at all. This is owing to the snow 
melting away, so that sledges cannot be employed 
for their transportation. They do not like to 
walk long distances, and at this season of the year 
are far away in the mountains with their herds. 
Occasionally they must visit the market-towns, 
where they may buy of Swedes, or Norwegians, 
or Finns, articles of food and clothing, but for 



REINDEER-LAND 27 

the most part these purchases are made in the 
winter, when they have game to sell. During the 
long Arctic night, however, the Lapp goes every- 
where, no special note being made of the hours of 
day and night, and it being a matter of indiffer- 
ence to the reindeer whether they travel under the 
faint light of the midnight skies, or under the 
rays of the sun, only so that there is snow on the 
ground. To them, as to the Lapps, it is the snow 
which makes their habitation a paradise. 

In the winter, therefore, the Lapp is quite a dif- 
ferent creature from what he is in the summer. 
His indolence, always apparent in summer, then 
wears o&; the sight of the first snow gives him 
an immense deal of happiness. Sitting in his pulka, 
robed in furs, his hand guiding a steed so swift 
that it traverses the snow-wastes at the rate of at 
least a hundred miles a day, he is the very reverse 
of the indolent fellow of the summer-time, when 
the warmth of midday superinduces laziness, and 
when his motion is confined to an ungainly wad- 
dle. For the Lapps are waddlers from make-up 
and from habit. They are stunted in size, bow- 
legged, and anything but handsome when seen at 
arms length. "They wriggle through life on the 
keen edge of starvation," says one writer, and they 
certainly show in their general phj^sique the effects 
of a starvation of sunlight. Some are cadaverous, 
some exhibit signs of smallpox, and all form a 
semi-dwarfed stock. The heights of the men 
vary from four feet seven to five feet four, and of 
the women from four feet six to five feet. 
Notwithstanding their hard life, however, it is 



28 REINDEER-LAND 

customary to find real old people among them. 
A hundred years and more have passed over the 
heads of not a few Lapps, and can be accounted 
for only on the ground that constant life in the 
open air, and in pure air, has superinduced lon- 
gevity. 

However, equipped in his curious toggery, with 
its display of many bright colors, the Lapp looks 
like the genial fellow that he usually is, and not 
at all like a barbarian. He has a mild and not 
ferocious eye; is yellowish in complexion, which 
some think comes wholly from the smoke of his 
hut, or tent, where there is frequently smoke so 
dense that, on entering the door, one cannot see 
across the tiniest room; in very fact, his skin 
beneath his clothing is quite white; has a large 
head, with a low and broad forehead; has black 
and oblique eyes, much like a Japanese ; has a flat 
and stubby nose, broad mouth, high cheek-bones, 
long hair, sometimes black but often tawny, a 
scanty beard, and an unmusical voice. On the 
whole he is agile, however, in proportion as he is 
short and '^stocky." Some Lapps have agreeable 
expressions; some look solemn as an owl, as if 
engaged in deep thought, which conjecture is, as 
a rule, a mistake, because he thinks neither deeply 
nor with an overstock of wisdom. 

So much, generally, for the appearance of the 
men. The women scarcely differ from their hus- 
bands, except in being homelier as age creeps on. 
It is a rare thing to find a good-looking young 
Lapp woman, though there are a few shining 
exceptions. A handsome old woman is probably 



REINDEER-LAND 29 

unknown. The reason for this is that the women 
marry early, bear many children, whom they carry 
about much on their backs, do not know how to 
dress gracefully, and become inveterate pipe 
smokers as well as men. All women wear prac- 
tically the same clothes as a man; that is, buck- 
skin trousers, and as many garments more beneath 
or above them as the w^eather demiands. When 
a Lapp man or woman is dressed up for zero 
weather, or rather for Arctic weather, which is 
often from thirty-five to fifty degrees below zero, 
he or she is a great deal stouter and uglier in 
appearance than would be the case in a sunnier 
clime, or with a few thicknesses less of woolens 
and skins. 

Unfortunately — and this spoils a large bit of 
romance about these people — nearly all Lapps 
look and are dirty. There may be some excep- 
tions with the rich, but, if so, they serve to em- 
phasize the rule. Water may not be scarce, (they 
can always secure it by melting snow), but it is 
cold, and there are few conveniences for bathing. 
Du Chaillu does tell us of families of the better 
classes with whom he associated, who systemat- 
ically observed the rule of bathing every week, in 
a somewhat promiscuous family fashion, but they 
were Lapp-Finns and do not constitute the ma- 
jority of the people whotn we are describing. No 
one-room life and no Arctic life conduces to clean- 
liness, or to aestheticism ; neither does it promote 
intellectual acumen. The Eskimos, Aleutian 
Islanders and Lapps are alike low in the scale of 
intellectual and spiritual attainments, 



30 REINDEER-LAND 

Here is a brief account of how the Lapps 
looked when **at home" by an American who vis- 
ited them a few years ago, and his observation 
agrees with the experiences of all other travelers : 
"We struck at about three o'clock in the after- 
noon a Lapp encampment, consisting of three or 
four gammes or wigwams. Though the air was 
so clear that the remotest mountain peaks seemed 
delusively near, I could not discern the huts until 
I was within four or five hundred feet of them. 
And even then I could discover nothing but the 
smoke indicative of human habitations. The 
gammes were but a shade darker than the moun- 
tain side, and looked at a distance like grassy 
hillocks. Nature seemed in the process of re- 
claiming them, clothing them in its all-pervading 
sombre harmony of desolation. They scarcely as- 
serted themselves at all against the cliff, or only 
in such feeble and ineffectual relief that they 
could not be found unless their locality were pre- 
viously known. As I approached a pack of small 
savage dogs started up with one accord and made 
a unanimous plunge for my legs, and though I 
was for five minutes extremely uncomfortable no- 
body made any motion to call the brutes off. They 
were shaggy little curs of the variety known as 
the reindeer dog; and after having exhausted 
some of their energy in dancing about me, barking 
in chorus, they began to snarl and growl with the 
hair on their necks standing on end, until I was 
obliged in self-defense to strike at one of them 
with my alpenstock. I hit perhaps harder than 



REINDEER-LAND 31 

I intended, for the dog ran off whimpering on 
three legs. 

"I greeted the group before the door of the 
gamme, which consisted of half a dozen persons, 
who had evidently just come out as the dogs pro- 
claimed the approach to strangers. They made 
me no reply except an inarticulate grunt, but 
stared in undisguised amazement. I was not 
aware of anything extraordinary in my appear- 
ance, but I began to feel decidedly queer as the 
consciousness dawned upon me of how queer I 
looked to them. The relativity of beauty, ugli- 
ness, queerness, nay, all human conceptions, be- 
came extremely vivid to me in this moment, for I 
had the liveliest sensation of being, perhaps, fully 
as hideous to them as they were to me. Their 
countenances exhibited the usual Mongolian char- 
acteristics, and I cannot imagine any human type 
farther removed from the Caucasian standard of 
beauty. They looked, both as to color and a cer- 
tain shrunken and shrivelled aspect, as if they had 
been hung up in a chimney and smoked, like so 
many herrings. They moreover exhaled an insid- 
iously compound odor, of which the principal in- 
gredient appeared to be smoke; and their eyes, 
which were red-rimmed and watery, had also suf- 
fered from the effect of smoke. 

^^Though the pervasive race type predominated 
in all, there was a great deal of individuality in 
the faces. Their features differed fully as much 
as those of the same number of Caucasians. In 
fact, the more I looked at them the more trans- 
parently expressive they appeared to me. All, ex- 



32 REINDEER-LAND 

cept a very old man (who wore a skin coat) , were 
dressed in long tunics of what I took to be brown 
fustian. There was (except in the head-dress) 
very little difference between the costume of the 
women and that of the men. I could detect no 
trace of linen on any of them, and there was an 
air of f rowsiness about them which was altogether 
at variance with what I had heard and read of 
their vanity and savage love of ornament. There 
was a half-grown boy among them who seemed 
full of suppressed jollity, and in whose dirty face 
there was a good deal of intelligence; but the 
rest were stolid, morose and malevolent. And yet 
I knew that the Lapps, in their own traditions, 
figure as nimble, cunning, quick-witted and viva- 
cious, and regard the Norwegians by contrast as 
slow, dull and simple-minded. It did not take me 
long to discover that I was here confronted with a 
virulent expression of race hostility. The ancient 
injustice and wrong, continually renewed, had 
made this poor and feeble remnant of an op- 
pressed people suspicious and stubbornly irrespon- 
sive. Probably they had suffered from some re- 
cent act of aggression from their ruthless neigh- 
bors ; for it is well-known that the nomadic Lapps 
who come in contact with the Norwegians are us- 
ually quarrelling with them about right of way 
right of pasture and other things, and are usually 
driven to the wall." 

Notwithstanding their want of ablutions, the 
Lapps are exceedingly hardy. They have few cli- 
matic diseases. Fevers, cancers and consumption 
are unknown among the Lapps, and rheumatism 



REINDEER-LAND 33 

IS exceedingly rare. They do not have colds, ow- 
ing to the purity and coldness of the air, of which 
they get a plentiful supply. They do, however, 
have measles and smallpox, and similar con- 
tagious diseases. Owing to the prevalence of high 
winds and the glare of the snow in summer, the 
Mountain Lapps are frequently afflicted with 
ophthalmia. 

In general, it may be said to their credit that 
the Lapps have a great capacity for endurance; 
they have quick understanding, much sagacity, are 
generally honest, and if they love anything in the 
world it is, their own wild country, with its rocks 
and fells. 

Dwellings of the Lapps. — The Lapps do not 
live in houses, with here and there an exception, 
such exception being confined to towns on the sea- 
coast. They prefer, instead, earth-huts, or tents ; 
usually living in the former in winter, and in the 
latter in summer. This kind of life is a necessity 
with them. They must journey from point to 
point as their herds journey, and as these always 
migrate when the reindeer-moss is scanty in one 
place and more abundant in another, neither they 
nor their masters can have permanent abiding- 
places. It is not more the will of the Lapps io 
roam, although migration has become a second 
nature with them, than it is a necessity for them 
to do so ; and so this enforced roaming habit fixes 
their character and destiny. The reindeer is the 
Lapp's whole wealth, except his family, and as the 
latter affords him society and comfort but brings 
in no definite income, he must follow up his 



34 REINDEER-LAND 

wealth. T^ese animals are never housed; they 
are always roamers. They go not only to where 
the moss is, but at certain seasons of the year go 
toward the coast where Nature seems to call them. 
We shall learn more of this presently. As follow 
them he must, it is plain that the Lapp can have 
no real home. 

In rare instances a Lapp hut seems to have at 
least a look of permanency, being built partly of 
logs or stone. But even then the inmates must 
leave that hut, especially in summer, when the 
deer take off toward the seashore, and it may be 
months before they can return to it. Happily, 
thieves are unknown, and the owners may leave 
many things behind, and on their return will find 
them unmolested. When built of logs they are 
hewn, four or six inches square, and laid flat upon 
one another, the corners being dovetailed and the 
seams calked with moss. In Lapland-Sweden 
these huts, if unusually well built, are sometimes 
covered with red paint, but this is rare; in Nor- 
way, whether in Lapland or elsewhere, houses are 
never, or very seldom, painted. 

As a rule the Lapp house is built only of 
coarsely cut large birch poles, the bark being left 
on, set upright, or slanting inward ; these timbers 
being then weather-boarded, so to speak, with 
bark, and this exterior being covered by turf, fully 
eight inches thick, on which, should it remain 
standing during the summer, vegetation grows 
abundantly. This makes a warm shelter, all the 
warmer when piled up on top and around the 
sides with many feet of snow. The roof, of the 



REINDEER-LAND 35 

same material, is seven or eight feet high, and the 
single room may be fifteen feet in diameter. 
When, in summer, tents are erected instead of 
huts, they are not much over five feet high — ^just 
so one can stand under them — and from five to six 
feet wide. Proportions and sizes differ, of course, 
but these are the average. A small, square door 
at the side, often so swung as to shut inwards by 
its own inclination, furnishes all the air the huts 
ever receive, except such as may get into the slight 
opening in the roof, which is made to let out at 
least a modicum of the smoke. 

From the roof-centre of hut or tent swings a 
large kettle, of iron or copper, and in this are 
cooked the various meals for the family. The 
advantage of a swinging kettle is that fire can be 
placed under it, and it is raised high enough so 
that the dogs cannot eat their provisions out of it, 
at the same moment the members of the family are 
dipping in their ladles. 

Because these dwelling are so transient, and 
because of the necessary migration which must 
often separate Lapp families widely, there are no 
strictly Lapp towns inhabited by the Mountain 
Lapps. Some of the Coast Lapps have more per- 
manent settlements, and the Mountain Lapps also 
often herd together in small encampments, but 
real Lapp towns are quite unknown. 

A Lapp tent is called a katdj or gamme. It is 
portable, being readily taken down and trans- 
ported from place to place by the reindeer. It is 
made of poles and canvas, the former being light 
yet strong, and the tops being placed at such an 



36 REINDEER-LAND 

angle towarAjeach other that frequently the com- 
pleted tent looks like an Indian wigwam. The 
coarse canvas-cloth of wool is rnacie by the Lapps 
themselves; they do not use skins for tent cov- 
erings. The door, also of loose canvas, is fast- 
ened up or allowed to drop, and may be buttoned 
at night. As these tents may be frequently 
changed from place to place, often miles apart, 
when therq is no snow on the ground, such a sum- 
mer-moving becomes a difficult task. In winter 
sledges can be employed, but in summer the tents 
must be packed on the backs of the reindeer, as 
must many of the household utensils. These lat- 
ter are usually kept in boxes. 

To place on these little animals all the house- 
hold load they should carry — from eighty to one 
hundred pounds — a pack-saddle is made, and it is 
quite a curiosity. It consists of two pieces of 
wood, rounded to fit the back of the reindeer, 
much like a saddle, and under them is placed a 
blanket to protect the back from wearing sore. 
The bundles are then balanced on each side. This 
arrangement is not dissimilar to the method of 
loading donkeys in Oriental countries. 

Domestic Arrangements. — Whether in dwell- 
ings of birch, or peat, or in tents of canvas, the 
Lapp family live in one room. No matter how 
many of the relatives or children constitute the 
one family, all eat and sleep side by side, and the 
dogs sleep there at the same time. The general 
kettle cooks all the food and the father hands out 
the portions to each person. A great deal of the 
meat and fish eaten have been previously dried. 



REINDEER-LAND . 37 

f 

Fresh meat is not prized so much as old meat, 
and decayedmeat seems to be at a premium. Cof- 
fee is considered a necessity and not a luxury, and 
Lapps usually know how to make good coffee, 
which they ^'settle" in the old-fashioned, but effec- 
tive, way, of dashing into the kettle cold water, or 
by using a dry fish-skin. The coffee is generally 
boiled in a small, separate copper kettle, with a 
spout, and lid on the spout, and, when used, is 
sweetened with the coarse beet sugar obtained in 
the market-towns; and sometimes milk is added. 
When they havt visitors at a meal, silver spoons 
are furnished, otherwise horn spoons are used. It 
is polite, when lump sugar is handed to the guest, 
for the Lapp woman to put a large lump between 
her teeth, crack it, and give the larger of the two 
portions to the visitor. 

The kettle, that is almost always boiling, usu- 
ally contains reindeer meat. The Lapps will not 
eat this raw, though they like raw fish. After meat 
and fish, they are probably most fond of cakes 
baked of rye. These are so hard and dry that a 
dog would scarcely touch them, but the Lapps 
seem to like them, and the more aged the cakes 
the better. The rye is taken, when it is ripe, or 
as near ripe as it will get, and is chopped up with 
the husks — never ground — into meal. Its quality 
is about that of hay and bran, which in other coun- 
tries horses will eat, but not men, unless starving. 
The dough from it is made into rings a foot in 
diameter, and three-quarters of an inch thick; 
and this is baked and hung up on the projection 
of the birch poles to dry. 



38 REINDEER-LAND 

The fireplace in the centre of the hut, or tent, 
above which swings the kettle, is called the aran. 
The space next to it, called the boassaj is the place 
of honor. The places farther away are usually 
termed according to their uses, but none of these 
places are divided by any partition. Generally 
speaking, one side is set apart for the work of the 
family and the other for the sleeping quarter. 
Everybody sleeps on skins on the ground and with 
the day-clothing on. Usually, under the skins are 
placed birch twigs. Sometimes, when it is very 
cold, an extra garment is put on, but generally the 
special night-covering is that of skins. There is 
some ventilation from the central hole in the roof, 
and if it rains or snows through that opening, 
the inmates simply move out of the way, or, if 
they cannot, endure it. Sometimes the father or 
brother comes in late at night, after a long 
journey with his herd, wet from the pouring rain, 
but he lies down as he comes in, and steams him- 
self dry by the heat of his body. He never catches 
cold from this process. Many travelers who have 
done the same thing in Palestine know that no ill 
results have followed. 

Every dwelling has a number of wooden boxes 
in which the spare clothing is kept, though such a 
wardrobe is exceedingly light, and in these are also 
put the extra utensils for cooking. These and the 
skins and the kettle constitute about the whole 
interior of a Lapp dwelling, not forgetting, how- 
ever, the cradle, which is swung from the poles 
like the kettle. The cradle is called the komse, 
and is made of a piece of wood, shaped like a large 



REINDEER-LAND 39 

shoe. It IS about two feet and a half long by fif- 
teen inches wide, and is lined with lichens and a 
cotton sheet. The baby is often put in this cradle 
naked, but is covered w^th warm skins and is then 
fastened in by a cord, laced through holes in the 
exterior. Alas! amid the constant cold and hard 
marches of the family, baby rarely reaches his sec- 
ond summer, which is one reason why the race of 
Lapps is decreasing in number with each decade. 
The baby is swung back and forth in this cradle, 
while the mother sings a crooning song, or sews. 

Another traveler in describing a Lapp encamp- 
ment wrote: **The first thing done at the new 
camp was to get a roof over their heads. Four 
poles, a little bowed at one end, were fastened 
together sit the bowed ends, and put into the 
gxound so as to form two arcs, which at the top 
were connected with a cross-bar, two other cross- 
bars being fastened, one at each side, a little be- 
low. To this simple but strong frame were at- 
tached about a dozen poles, to give a suitable 
shape and necessary stability to the whole. Two 
poles were fastened together at the front, in the 
form of scissors, leaving an opening between for 
•.a door, two similar poles being placed at the back, 
but without opening between. Our host then 
cast over the frame, with a single throw for each 
piece, two large triangular pieces of woolen cloth, 
fastening them together at the back with pins of 
reindeer bone. The Moor', a nearly triangular 
piece of cloth fastened to a wooden frame, usually 
ornamented with carvings, is always carried along 
from one camp to another. The area covered by 



40 REINDEER-LAND 

the tent was about twelve square yards, its height 
at tiie top being ^a little over six feet. 

''The first thing done was to build a fire-place, 
an oval spot in the middle of the tent being in- 
closed with a number of stones as large as a man's 
head. A large iron pot filled with water and 
reindeer meat was suspended from the uppermost 
cross-bar, a fire made, and the coffee-pot put on. 
From each side of the door-opening to the fire- 
place were laid two small birch logs, inclosing the 
place for fuel, while the space opposite, behind the 
fireplace — in olden times consecrated to Lappon- 
ian divinities and magic exercises — ^was used as 
the kitchen department. By this time we were all 
hungry. We lay down about the fire, eating, 
drinking coflFee, and smoking our pipes, but were 
soon disturbed by grandpa Torkel, who came with 
his arms full of birch-branches, which he spread 
on the ground for a flooring, artistically arranging 
them to serve as carpeting and mattresses at the 
same time. Having finished the floor and tight- 
ened the tent all round at the ground, he pro- 
ceeded to make a small opening at the back to 
regulate the draft, so that the smoke might es- 
cape through the roof.'' 

The dog is a most important article of domestic 
use in Lapland. His tenancy of the ^'dwelling" 
is not of such insignificant importance as it may 
appear, because not one dog, but many, are taken 
in as members of the Lapp family. Not only does 
the man of the house have several dogs, but every 
member of the family is supposed to have at least 
one, which is {5eculiarly his own, and to his par- 



REINDEER-LAND 41 , 

ticular owner and not to anyone else the dog 
grows attached. It is not unccmmon to find in 
one tent six or eight dogs, all huddled around the 
human sleepers at night. In the daytime each dog 
follows his own master or mistress, wherever he 
or she goes. The dog is not petted much; indeed, 
is rather roughly treated, the reason given being 
that "it hardens him." He is never overfed; in 
fact must steal much of the food he gets, and this 
he does even when the family are at their meals. 
The dogs are small, of various colors, usually 
brown or yellow, and are covered with long and 
thick hair. - Some have no tails, being born with- 
out them. While not over-sagacious, they are 
trained to go after stray members of a deer-herd 
and do it with "quickness and dispatch.'* The 
writer has seen two such dogs go down the roads^ 
for a mile in a twinkling, and bring back a wan- 
r dering reindeer with as much dexterity as the best 
breed of sheep-dog drives back a strayling from 
vthe flock. The deer in that case seemed to be used 
to it, as he would stop and wait till the two dogs 
were on his very heels, and then would hurry 
back toward the herd as if his little escapades were 
only for play. 

Cats are rare in Lapland, while goats, sheep and 
cattle are sometimes owned by Lapps who live 
near the coast, or in the forests of the plains of 
Lapland-Sweden, but are not to be found in the 
mountains, where it is extremely cold, and where 
there can be no provisions for their housing. 

Sometimes the hut, or tent, is completely 
snowed under. Day after day the terrible Arctic 



42 REINDEER-LAND 

snowstorm will pile up snow into drifts, and, in 
the meantime, while the dwelling is being sur- 
rounded, or covered, with it, the inmates will not 
stir. Finally, when the storm is over, the family 
must dig their way out, and hunt up their rein- 
deer, which have probably sought shelter on the 
side of a precipice, or edge of a forest, where the 
drifts are not so deep. 

Food of the Lapps. — While we have already 
named the chief articles of food consumed by the 
Lapps — reindeer meat, fish, when they can get it, 
and cakes — this by no means exhausts the whole 
store. They drink reindeer milk, sometimes re- 
ducing it with water, since it is very rich; they 
make soups, usually of the reindeer meat; and 
they also like the dried blood of the reindeer, 
which, when powdered, is cooked with flour, so 
as to make a porridge, and is also sometimes made 
into pancakes. They have wild game when they 
can secure it. None of the luxuries of the table, 
as known to more civilized nations, ever find their 
way into the Laplander's dwelling. 

Lapland has a few berries at certain seasons. 
Wild raspberries, when found, are luscious and 
have slightly the flavor of a pineapple. Straw- 
berries grow small, but are exceedingly sweet. 
Both these berries may be found up to and 
slightly beyond seventy degrees north latitude. 
There is another berry, also common throughout 
Norway, and to be found in some portions of Lap- 
land, the multebar, often called "cloud-berry,** 
which is yellow, of the size of a mulberry, and is 
rather pleasant to the taste, especially when 



REINDEER-LAND 43 

cooked. It grows near peat-bogs and on marshy- 
ground, and^ while some do not like its flavor, 
even when cooked, the writer thinks that, with 
cream, it is a good fruit. 

Reindeer meat is surprisingly tender when 
properly cooked, and makes the best ^'hamburg 
steak'' in the world. Sometimes it seems to be 
tough and dry, but the writer has eaten it when 
he preferred it to the best beefsteak obtainable in 
America, although it may have been that appe- 
tite and other conditions had something to do with 
his judgment. We remember well an interesting 
episode in northern Norway a few years since, 
when a fairly large party, of which the writer was 
one, desired to have a taste of reindeer meat for 
the first time. Having heard that the government 
had a herd of reindeer at a certain station in the 
mountains, and that occasionally the station mas- 
ter could select a deer from the herd, and kill it 
for food, although he must have more than ordi- 
nary reasons for doing so, the government tele- 
phone was employed to enquire whether there 
might not be such a deer killed and reindeer steak 
put on the table at the evening meal. The reply 
was that it was doubtful. It was about nine p. m. 
before a score of hungry people reached the bleak 
inn, situated in an extremely forlorn valley, full 
of rocks and destitute of vegetation; but then, 
sure enough, on the table came a reindeer steak, 
and the meal proved to be one of the most delight- 
ful to which any of us had ever sat down. What 
excuse the station-master made for killing that 
reindeer we never enquired. 



44 REINDEER-LAND 

Arctic explorers generally take with them what 
is called pemmican, and this is made from reindeer 
flesh. It consists of strips of venison, dried by the 
sun or wind, pounded into a paste and pressed 
tightly into cakes, and will keep for a long period. 

Dress and other Customs. — All Lapps, rich or 
poor, men or women, are of necessity given to 
fashions that do not change. Warmth is the 
prime object, and that is best obtained by deer- 
skin trousers and coat. The coat comes nearly to 
the knee, and is girt round by a belt that draws 
it up pretty close to the body. In this belt the 
man has his sheath-knife (called a tol-kniv). 
Every boy when six years old is presented with 
such a knife, and must wear it, and probably feels 
proud to wear it; a man never goes without it. 
This is a Norwegian, as well as Lapp, custom. 
A stranger might think it indicated ferocity of 
temperament, a desire to slay somebody, but, in- 
stead, it means that a knife of this character is 
always a handy thing to have around. With it he 
can kill a deer, or a bear (but the Lapp rarely 
allows himself to come near enough to the latter 
to use a knife), cut a sapling, carve his food, or do 
any of those many things for which a combined 
carving-knife and jack-knife may be used. 

There is no dress in the world warmer than the 
reindeer-skin. The tunic (the coat) as made, and 
before being belted, is loose, but close-fitting at the 
neck, and is put on over the head. Neither cold 
air, winter snow, nor summer rain can get within 
that coat. It is called a kapta. Under it are 
woolen garments, sometimes two or more. The 



REINDEER-LAND 45 

breeches are closer fitting, and are made from the 
skin of the reindeer's legs, which is considered 
the warmest of all. The boots also, called yerrdj 
are of the same skin, are soft and pliable, and will 
turn water readily. It is this kind of boot, in fact, 
which enables the Lapp to use his skis so well; 
for it is roomy, fits to the curved shape of the 
centre of the skij and so allows the foot to adjust 
itself to the exigency either of ordinary walking, 
or of sliding on the ski over the snow at great 
speed, especially down hill. Ordinary leather 
shoes fastened to skis would give the wearer a 
tumble at' unexpected times, but the Lapp is 
always an expert with deer-skin boots. The foot 
part is sometimes packed with moss, or hay, to give 
it added warmth, and the foot itself is also covered 
in winter with one or two warm, homespun stock- 
ings. Sometimes the boots are lined with eider- 
down. On the whole, the Lapp rarely complains 
of cold feet even in the coldest weather. 

In winter the Lapp also wears mittens, which 
are likewise of skin, and are so large that one, or, 
if necessary, two woolen mittens can be worn in- 
side of the outer pair. A fur head-dress com- 
pletes the cold day costume. In summer-time the 
head-dress is generally of cloth, consisting of a 
band around the forehead, and then of a tall, pear- 
shaped crown. 

Because both men and women dress so much 
alike the women are rarely attractive, unless they 
are fixed up for a special occasion with bright col- 
ored ribbons; and even then few of them possess 
any marks of feminine beauty. In the aggregate 



46 REINDEER-LAND 

female attractiveness is not helped in Lapland by 
*'the tailor's cut." The women are fond of other 
ornaments, beside red and yellow ribbons; they 
like jewelry, or, if not obtainable, tinsels, which 
are put anywhere on their coats or hands. 

Du Chaillu, in describing the garments of these 
people and their warm welcome to him, wrote as 
follows: ''On reaching the camp I found three 
young women and one man; the former were just 
giving the last touches to their toilets — one was 
putting on a handsome silver belt, another ar- 
ranging her dress, a third fastening her shoes: 
Their dresses of thick blue woolen cloth, called 
viiolpo, were trimmed with red and yellow bands 
at the lower end of the skirt, and revealed a wool- 
en undergarment — the overskirt reaching to the 
ankle; their undershirts were nicely embroidered 
at the openings, and looked quite pretty, the color 
contrasting well with that of the skin. They also 
wore belts, which are considered one of the chief 
ornaments, and some of them are expensive. Only 
one had a belt ornamented with silver, the others 
were made of copper; these ornaments, about one 
inch wide, were fastened upon the cloth so close 
together that the material could hardly be seen; 
a pretty clasp fastened the belt, and from it hung 
a little knife and a pair of scissors. Woolen leg- 
gings of a bluish color, fitting somewhat closely, 
completed the costume. One of them wore new 
summer shoes, made of dressed reindeer skin, 
without heels; the other had no shoes, and I no- 
ticed that their feet were small, well-shaped, and 
very clean. The men's frocks (kapte) were short- 



REINDEER-LAND 47 

er, like those of my guides, falling a little below 
the knees, and were trimmed at the bottom with a 
band of bright color, contrasting with the blue; 
the colors of their undershirts were embroidered 
with bright-colored thread. The belts worn by 
the men were sometimes two or three inches wide, 
made of leather, with bears' teeth, to show that 
the wearer had killed his prey; they often wore 
a sort of waistcoat, richly adorned with silver or- 
naments, showing through the opening of their 
kapte. 

'^The women's faces had been washed, and 
their hair combed ; their heads were covered with 
a rather graceful cap. I was surprised at the good 
looks of the two of them ; they had blue eyes, very 
small hands, and fair hair, of a somewhat reddish 
tinge; their complexions were rosy, and the skin 
remarkably white where it had been protected 
from the wind. The men's skins were quite red, 
having been tanned by exposure. There was not 
the slightest appearance of shyness is these people ; 
we were welcomed at once; the coffee-kettle was 
put over the fire; coffee, already roasted, was 
ground, boiled, and clarified with a piece of dry 
fish-skin, and served to me in a queer-shaped little 
silver cup, which I admired very much; it was a 
family heirloom, said to be about a hundred years 
old. The shape of the spoon was very graceful. 
This also was a family relic, and a great deal old- 
er than the cup; it was not clean, reindeer milk 
having dried upon it, and I was much amused by 
the way the girl washed it. As there was no water 
at hand, she passed her little red tongue over it 



48 REINDEER-LAND 

several times until it was quite clean and smooth ; 
and then, as if it had been a matter of course, 
filled it with milk from a bowl, stirred up the 
coffee, and handed me the cup. I did not alto- 
gether admire this way of cleaning spoons. Hap- 
pily, her teeth were exquisitely white, and her lips 
as red as cherries ; and, although I have seen Lap- 
landers since, I think she was the prettiest one I 
ever met." 

We have said that both sexes use tobacco. 
They secure this at the trading stations, and carry 
it in pouches made of reindeer-skin. Every man 
and woman, in most households, smokes a pipe, 
but, of course, there are exceptions. To clean the 
pipe, many of them use a pipe-cleaner made of a 
bird^s bill. 

The practice of polygamy is not uncommon, 
and yet less so than would be the case were the 
cost of an extra wife or two not so exorbitant. 
When a Lapp marries he must pay the father of 
the bride a good sum, often as high as a hundred 
reindeer — never less than twenty — and the major- 
ity of Lapps are too poor to indulge in the luxury 
of a second wife, unless it seems to him to be 
absolutely necessary. The price alluded to is 
based upon the expenses incurred by the father in 
bringing up his daughter, and also upon the esti- 
mated value of her lost services. The daughter of 
a rich Lapp is, consequently, valued at a far higher 
rate than the daughter of a poor Lapp. 

The women do not perform much drudgery, in 
the sense in which many German women are 
drudges, as there are usually no cattle or swine 



REINDEER-LAND 49 

to feed and house, no grounds to till, no heavy 
burdens to carry beyond that of their baby when 
migrating. They care for the dwelling, tend the 
children, prepare the skin-clothing, and make vari- 
ous articles, like spoons of horn, threads of rein- 
deer sinew, etc., for their own use and for sale. 
They can talk by the hour, and talk as sensibly as 
their husbands and brothers, but neither sex can 
be said to talk entertainingly, except in a few in- 
stances. The common want of that education 
which gives breadth and point to conversation is 
sadly noticeable among this people. The usual 
conversation is about the reindeer, the weather, 
and sometimes about superstitions or myths ; more 
rarely about religion,, although they frequently 
question strangers as to the Trinity and similar 
features of the Christian religion. They never 
converse of history, for the Lapps have no his- 
tory, and so waste no time over it. 

They have timepieces, usually cheap watches 
from Germany and Sweden, and occasionally 
wooden clocks. It is essential both during the 
the long day when the sun does not set, and dur- 
ing **the long night," when the sun does not rise, 
for these people to know the time, and they can- 
not, especially in winter, find out the exact hours 
from the sun. All, therefore, feel it imperative 
to have watches, even if no two are alike. 

Squatting is probably a more common position 
than sitting, for chairs are a luxury and a rarity. 

One of the saddest things in the domestic life 
of the Lapps is the custom practiced — by some, at 
least, of the Mountain Lapps — of leaving their 



50 REINDEER-LAND 

aged and helpless parents, when they are on the 
move, and father or mother becomes too feeble to 
pursue the journey, to die by the roadside. Food 
IS put by them, good-byes are said, and the younger 
and more vigorous proceed, while the worn-out 
ones are left to perish by neglect and cold. It is an 
old custom, which a more modern religion than 
they formerly possessed has done much to change, 
but It has been a national custom, which, we fear, 
has not wholly passed away. Custom makes 
heartless wretches of more people in the world 
than the Lapps. 

Affection cannot be said to be a strong trait of 
the Lapps. Byron sang: 

" The cold in clime are cold in blood, 
Their love can scarce deserve the name." 

They do have in their youth their trysting-days, 
they woo and marry, but it is usually a passing 
sentiment, often a mere matter of accommodation 
or barter, which brings about the actual marriage, 
and it does not last. They have their love-songs, 
but, alas! life is so hard and experiences so bit- 
ter that there seems to be neither time nor incli- 
nation to make life's bitter sweet with the hal- 
lowing influences of pure and undefiled affection. 
The mother's heart warms to the little one, for 
Nature is true, and the little one cuddles up by its 
mother's side in affectionate and helpless depend- 
ence; but it wears off when the teens are past, 
and then life becomes earnest, real, hard and cold. 
There is much intermarriage between Lapps 
and Finns, and less, but still some, between Lapps 
and Norwegians, and between Lapps and Swedes. 



REINDEER-LAND 51 

Occasionally a total foreigner comes in to marry 
a Lapp woman and lives with her the rest of his 
life. In an account of the visit of an American 
girl a few years ago to a Lapp town, called 
Otschon, there is this interesting incident noted: 
''The only inmate of the hut was an old man, 
who lay by a smoking fire, rocking a cradle on 
his knee. We saw at a glance that he was no 
Lapp, his bright, coal-black eyes, pointed beard, 
and dark complexion proclaiming a southern ori- 
gin. He was, in fact, an old French 'militaire,' 
and we were glad to come across him, as we had 
heard something of him before from his wife, an 
old Lapp woman. We seated ourselves on the 
floor of the smoky cabin and listened to the pa- 
thetic story of Frank Loster's wandering life. 
Speaking in his gentle voice, now in French and 
now in German, the old man told us of his birth- 
place, Marseilles, his French mother and German 
father, his soldier-life in the Crimea, the scars 
which he still bore on his hand and wrist, and 
his subsequent imprisonment for a year by the 
Russians. After his liberation he seems to have 
joined the French navy, for he wandered in ships 
all over the world and learned many languages. 
Finally he met his fate on the shores of the Baltic 
— a Lapp woman, whom he married, and with 
whom he had been living for thirty years in this 
remote, far-out-of-world spot. Too old and in- 
firm to hunt for reindeer, the Lapps treated him 
as a servant, though with this difference — they 
never paid him, but in return for food he did all 
the cooking and menial work, and looked after the 



52 REINDEER-LAND 

babies. It's a dreary life/ he said, 'and I do so long 
to see my dear Fatherland again, before I die. 
But that, alas! is impossible.'" 

A Lapp will sleep whenever and wherever he is 
tired, regardless of being in his dwelling, or out 
upon the snow. Others would die, or think they 
would, if they slept upon the snow over night, 
but he wakes up again, after many hours of 
napping, refreshed. 

The besetting sin of the Lapp is drunkenness. 
The originator of vodka in Russia and of Unkle 
in Lapland has much to answer for, as it makes 
the home of many a man miserable, and, while 
when sober the Lapp is generally a decent citi- 
zen, when drunk he is the most foolish and irre- 
sponsible of mankind. Finkle is a whiskey dis- 
tilled from grain, and is most vile and also cheap. 

But with all his faults — ^want of cleanliness, 
want of education, love of whiskey, avaricious- 
ness — he is not a revengeful being, and he is not 
a bandit. It is comparatively safe to travel with 
him in any part of his country; just as safe as in 
any civilized land, and more so than in some so- 
called civilized countries. He seeks and loves 
peace, and carries on no warfare with other peo- 
ples. Other nations of the world, and other races, 
who are supposed to be more civilized than he, 
wage war and kill, but the Lapp follows on, 
year after year, century after century, his out- 
door avocation of raising and feeding, of tending, 
milking and following after, of selling and killing 
for food, his herds of reindeer and is content. He 
has no ambition beyond his territorial district, or 



REINDEER-LAND 53 

beyond his habitual customs; no desire to be an 
office-holder; no anxiety to get rich at the ex- 
pense of other poor mortals from whom he might 
take away property or reputation; no ideas of 
lording it over others, or of trespassing on others 
rights. He is happy to live and to die as he was 
born, — a Lapp. As one writer well says : ''Neither 
the coldness of winter, nor the lengths of the 
nights; neither the wildness of the forests, nor 
the vagrant disposition of the herd, interrupts the 
even tenor of the Lapp's life. By night and day is 
he seen attending his favorite herds, remaining 
unaffected ,m a season which would be speedy 
death to those bred in milder climates. He gives 
himself no uneasiness to house his herds, or to 
provide a winter subsistence for them; he is at 
the trouble neither of manuring his grounds, nor 
of bringing in his harvest; he is not the hireling 
of another's luxury; all his labors are to obviate 
the difficulties of his own situation ; and these he 
undergoes with cheerfulness, as he is sure to 
enjoy the fruit of his own industry." 

Marriage Ceremonies. — Girls are allowed to 
marry at sixteen, but the match is usually deter- 
mined by the parents. An engagement ring is 
generally presented to the bride, and sometimes 
a silver spoon. It is the uniform custom, when 
a child is born, for such child to be presented with 
a reindeer by the father or grandfather. The 
Lapps are never divorced; they may have more 
than one wife, but each remains his wife until 
death. 

It may be a good place here to describe the 



54 REINDEER-LAND 

usual wedding ceremonies of the Lapps, and to do 
it we shall borrow from an account written by- 
one who saw a wedding at Hammerfest: ^'One 
day I attended a Lapponian wedding, in the 
church. As I entered, the bride and groom were 
standing before the altar; and about a score of 
relatives and friends, the men on one side, the 
women on the other, occupied the front seats. 
The pastor in a black robe and white frilled col- 
lar, read the service, and the sexton stood at the 
side, hymn-book in hand, ready to lead the 
singing. The bride was attired in a dark blue 
woolen tunic, with orange and red trimmings; 
her boots, fastened with a vari-colored ribbon, 
which was wound around them, extended half- 
way to the knees; over her shoulders she had 
thrown a small green-colored shawl. Upon her 
head she wore a brilliant cap, with a huge bunch 
of narrow ribbon streaming behind. The bride- 
groom was dressed in a similar style, except that 
his tunic was shorter, and that he had upon his 
head a simple woolen turban. The wedding-ser- 
vice, in Norwegian, was read, rehearsed and sung 
by the pastor, with refrains by the sexton. None 
of the Lapps seemed to join in either the re- 
sponses or the singing. At the close of the cere- 
mony, the pastor and sexton congratulated the 
married pair, and, a procession being formed, the 
company marched, two by two, out of the church 
and down the street.** 

Classes of Lapps. — ^We have referred to the 
Lapps as being divided into two general classes, 
Mountain Lapps and Coast Lapps. While this 



REINDEER-LAND 55 

division will do for usual purposes, it must not 
be understood that there are no subdivisions of 
these two classes. Those who have studied the 
subject carefully make, in the whole, five divisions 
of the people: Mountain, or nomad Lapps; Sea 
Lapps; Forest Lapps; River Lapps; Fisher 
Lapps. But the differences between some of these 
classes lie chiefly in their places of residence, or 
occupation. Mountain Lapps are not fishermen, 
nor are Forest Lapps, as a rule; but all Lapps, 
whatever their occupation, are derived from the 
Mountain Lapps, so that the latter represent the 
original stock more distinctly than any other. 
The Sea and Fisher Lapps are primarily a people 
who live by fishing, and, while some of the poor 
among them are obliged to live in turf dwellings, 
many have houses of wood. The River Lapps 
also do some farming, and they are especially 
expert at salmon fishing. They often keep cat- 
tle, horses, sheep and goats, and are considered 
rnore stable, and, in some senses, appear to be more 
civilized than most other kinds. They own rein- 
deer, but have them cared for in the summer by 
the Mountain Lapps in the mountains, while they 
themselves farm. The Forest Lapps are a class 
who prefer to live in the woods, and are only 
semi-nomadic. They sometimes build large en- 
closures for their reindeer, so that they will not 
be obliged to wander around after them. 

While most of these classes of Lapps prefer to 
live isolated lives, some like to herd together in 
hamlets; but this can hardly be set down as a 
special characteristic of any one of the classes 



56 REINDEER-LAND 

named above, though it is distinctly not the char- 
acteristic of the Mountain Lapps. 

Language of the Lapps. — ^The Lapps speak 
neither Swedish nor Norwegian, although certain 
of those words have crept into their language; 
nor yet Finnish, although their language is very 
similar to that of the Finns, and philologists 
declare that the latter and the Lapp language had 
a common origin. It is not many years ago (in 
1852) since the Lapp language was put by a 
Norsk missionary into a permanent alphabet. It is, 
as now written, strictly phonetic, though strangely 
enough its nouns have no gender. This can hardly 
be, as a wag has suggested, because one can scarce- 
ly tell the difference between the Lapp men and 
women, but because there has not seemed to arise 
a necessity for making a distinction. It simplifies 
the language much, in any event. Because of the 
various countries — Russia, Finland, Sweden and 
Norway — in which the Lapps find themselves, 
each having in general a distinct language, the 
centuries have created many dialects, of which 
there are four leading and any number of smaller 
ones. It is a misfortune to the purity of a 
language to have it brought into close contact 
with other languages, especially when the former 
is in its infancy; and this is precisely what has 
happened in the case of the Lapp tongue. As a 
result, Scandinavian, and especially Norsk, words 
in large numbers have been imported into and be- 
come a part of the native speech. It is an interest- 
ing fact, as proving the importance of the rein- 
deer in their domestic economy and daily life, that 



REINDEER-LAND 57 

the Lapps use fully three hundred words relating 
to that animal alone. 

The Lapps have a small literature, consisting 
chiefly of songs and legends akin to those of Fin- 
land. The first publication of these probably 
dates from 1656. Their songs scarcely compare 
in beauty and certainly not in number with those 
embraced in the great epic of Finland, the *^Kale- 
vala."^ A grammar of the Lapp tongue was first 
published in 1733. Neither of the above publica- 
tions, however, were in the present final phonetic 
form of the Lapp language. 

Lapp words seem to run much into two sylla- 
bles, indicating a paucity in language quite the 
contrary to that of many other uneducated races, 
for example among the American Indians, where 
long and complex words — compounded of smaller 
words, of course — are so common. The word 
**father" is a three-syllable word, arahic; but 
"mother," "daughter," "boy," "reindeer," "dog," 
and similar words in common use, have two sylla- 
bles. The word for "daughter" is the most beau- 
tiful of all, nita, and reminds one strongly of the 
poem so often sung in our own language: 

" *Nita, Juanita," etc. 

The word for "mother" is adnic; for "boy," 
swinno; for "dog," birna; for "reindeer," hotene. 
In the matter of education, the Swedish and 
Norwegian governments undertake to send school- 
masters into Lapland during the summer season, 
to teach, but it is most difficult work, meeting 
with indifferent success because of the migratory 



58 REINDEER-LAND 

habits of the people, and the fact that they have 
no towns or permanent places where the children 
can be congregated. The government pays these 
itinerant schoolmasters only $25 for the season; 
sometimes the Lapps themselves add to this small 
stipend a few dollars more. 

Eeligion of the Lapps. — The state religion in 
Norway and Sweden being Lutheran and prac- 
tically compulsory, the result is that such of the 
Lapps as the missionaries or the state can get hold 
of are brought into the Lutheran Church by 
^^ Confirmation. '* The efforts to Christianize the 
Lapps have been on the whole successful, so far as 
inducing them to attend church once or twice a 
year, but there has been, naturally, better suc- 
cess in this respect with the Coast than with the 
Mountain Lapps. Until 1600 all Lapps were 
idolaters — pagans; then Christian IV. of Den- 
mark and Norway broke up their existing forms 
of worship with much severity, and probably ac- 
tual idolaters do not now exist among them. 

Their former mode of worship seems to have 
resembled that of the ancient Norsemen, and was 
based upon a mythology thoroughly Scandinavian 
and Teutonic, but modified. In fact all the Scan- 
dinavian and Teutonic nations had practically one 
mythology, which may be a proof of the oneness 
of these races; but it may also be that the more 
extensive and more powerful peoples surrounding 
the Lapps gave to them, at a distant period, their 
forms of religion. In any event, the general 
mythology of the north-of-Europe nations have 
a remarkable similarity to the mythology of the 



REINDEER-LAND 59 

peoples who originally dwelt on the high plateaus 
of Central Asia, whence all these races are be- 
lieved to have had their origin. The Grecian 
mythology was also allied to this Oriental myth- 
ology in its general features, although their gods 
bore Grecian names. 

The Lapps, in worshiping their idols, which 
were principally of wood, did it with simple 
rites within enclosures of boughs. They had the 
usual Scandinavian five orders of divinities, 
namely, super-celestial, celestial, atmospheric, 
manes and demons. One god, Athzie, created all 
things; he was the super-celestial divinity. His 
son, Neid, kept the world in order and was the 
celestial deity. While simpler, perhaps, in their 
attributes, these divinities embodied the general 
attributes of Odin and Thor, the two great Scan- 
dinavian deities.^ One of the atmospheric gods 
was Storyunkare, god of beasts, of the chase and 
of fishing. 

The Lapps also believed in wizards, although 
the practice of the art, singularly enough, was by 
the men only. The Lapp wizard, during his state 
of divination, was supposed to fall into a state of 
trance, and then it was thought his soul "ran 
about at large to pursue its inquiries." Much use 
was made of a divining-drum, made of reindeer- 
skin, stretched over a wooden frame. This was 
called a sarnpOj or runehoom, and the Lapps have 
a song: 

*' If thou wilt make the sampo 
Of proijer chequered pattern, 
I will give my daughter 
And reward with a maid thy trouble." 



6o REINDEER-LAND 

The Scandinavian nations all had a devil-god, 
and the Lapps had their god-demons. The Lapps 
of the present day have continued their faith in 
charms and amulets to ward off these evil spirits. 
Some of them w^ear strings of the teeth of certain 
animals, supposing them to give strength and cour- 
age. 

The Norwegian and Swedish missionaries have 
endeavored to secure the building of churches at 
various convenient points in Lapland, so that at 
least once a year every Lapp may get to church 
and the younger members of his family be * 'con- 
firmed." The graveyard always adjoins it, and, 
where practicable, there is a schoolhouse. Burials 
in winter are usually made in this graveyard in a 
common grave, because the frost is deep. When 
the spring sunshine melts the snow and kisses 
away the frost, the bodies are removed and regu- 
lar separate interments will be made. At church 
services the men sit on one side of the church and 
the women on the other, and all are dressed in 
their best clothes, the men usually wearing a 
square cap, and the women having on one or 
more bright silk handkerchiefs about the neck, 
these being procured at the shops in the nearest 
market-town. 

The churches are small wooden affairs, ugly 
enough inside and without, the outside being fre- 
quently whitewashed. When services are held 
but once or twice a year, the services of the chris- 
tenings and the funerals are combined ; or, rather, 
after the christening of all babies born during 
the past several months, the congregation ad- 



REINDEER-LAND 6i 

journs to the little cemetery at the church, and a 
service is chanted over the graves of those who 
have died since the previous one. 

The religion of the Lapps cannot be very deep, 
but in many cases it is sincere. They are usually 
considered to be a narrow-minded, stolid, and 
avaricious people ; avaricious in a sense that when 
they come into contact with other nationalities 
they seem to want to *^get all they can, and keep 
all they get,'' and yet without stealing. But they 
are naturally docile, easily influenced as well as 
pleased, and extremely hospitable. It is true they 
have no higher ideals, spiritual or intellectual, be- 
cause Nature meets them with such a stern face 
that their lives are wholly given up to ^'earning 
bread," and having a place for eating, drinking 
and sleeping. Their ambitions, as has heretofore 
been said, are chiefly to own more reindeer. Nev- 
ertheless religion has m.ellowed many of them, 
and some are of the sweetest temper and truest 
manliness, although these are probably the ex- 
ceptions rather than the rule. 



CHAPTER III. 
More About the Country. 

Country and Climate. — Reindeer-land is a 
country that is rugged in parts, in parts marshy 
and flat. It has singularly rounded eminences, 
especially along the seacoast. One sees this fea- 
ture of the land with great distinctness all the way 
from Trondhjem, northward, and far beyond the 



62 REINDEER-LAND 

Lofoten Islands, and even in the islands of the 
Baltic ocean and in the north Gulf of Bothnia. It 
is due to early glacial action. At a distance it is 
difficult to tell when there are not clouds along 
the horizon. The resemblance between hundreds 
of rounded, dark-colored islands, and similarly 
rounded hilltops, and the heavy clouds is so close 
as to be sometimes indistinguishable. 

Lapland is not treeless, but as one goes north 
the trees become fewer and more stunted. Birch, 
pine, fir and alder are the main trees to be found, 
and these grow amid the rocks, although sparsely 
rather than profusely. Where the pine forests 
stop, the birch forests begin. The birch tree has a 
light-colored foliage and a light trunk, which 
give an idyllic charm to the whole region. A tree 
a foot in diameter is rare, and, when found, is 
probably one hundred and fifty years old, so slow 
is its natural growth. 

There are some pretty high mountains in Nor- 
wegian Lapland, the highest being Sulitelma, 
6326 feet above the sea. This is in a glacial dis- 
trict, which abounds in ice and snow of bewil- 
dering beauty, and where the country generally is 
full of boulders, and where the wildness is of the 
roughest character. Sulitelma is accessible to the 
climber, and has in its vicinity copper mines, em- 
ploying nearly a thousand men. 

There are a few wild-fruit trees in the country, 
but without fruit. The rivers have in them sal- 
mon, trout, perch and pike; and no better sal- 
mon or trout are to be found in the world. In 
the ocean along the coast are cod, mackerel, hali- 



REINDEER-LAND 63 

but and herring, not to speak of sharks occasion- 
ally. 

Nature looks, indeed, in Lapland as she does 
nowhere else ; much as in the colder and most bar- 
ren places of Scotland ; more perhaps like Pales- 
tine, as one goes northward from Jerusalem, but 
with the difference that Lapland is not treeless, 
and in spots there are fertile valleys, as well as 
some lakes. There are a number of important 
water courses in Lapland, especially in Lapland- 
Sweden. Toward the Arctic Ocean the land de- 
scends abruptly toward the north; toward the 
Gulf of Bothnia and the Finnish lakes there is a 
gradual decline from the general lofty plateau to 
the sea-level. 

There is a vast deal of peat in the country, 
which may be due to the long and wet spring 
seasons and the decaying timber of centuries. 

Wild flowers — white, blue, red and pink — and 
including, of course, the yellow buttercup, are 
plentiful everywhere in the summer-time. There 
is no place in Europe where they are more abun- 
dant than in the southern part of the Arctic region. 
As many as fifty rare Alpine plants, most of them 
flowering, have been found in one Lapland prov- 
ince alone; and in another forty-five have been 
counted. 

The winter season extends over nine months in 
the year, and the spring, summer and fall are, 
therefore, pushed into three months, although, for 
practical purposes, the seasons are divided into two 
parts, winter and summer. During the brief 
summer season the heat of midday is quite intense, 



64 REINDEER-LAND 

the thermometer frequently registering 85 de- 
grees in the shade and 120 degrees in the sun. 

In winter there seems to be scarcely a limit to 
which the thermometer may not go, but both na- 
tives and travelers find the air, when the ther- 
mometer marks 40 degrees, healthy, and throat 
troubles are unknown. When it is cold, the air 
is generally still (if not, the wind is frightful to 
face), and, if one be only properly clothed, it is 
exhilarating as well as beneficial. In fact the 
Lapps who have the largest families and the most 
healthy children are those who reside in the most 
northerly and coldest portions of Lapland. 

But it is also a fact, not generally known, that 
within the Arctic Circle in Lapland the general 
climate, while averaging cold, is much less so the 
year round than in a similar latitude in America 
or in Asia. This is due, no doubt, in large part 
to the influence of the Gulf Stream, which tem- 
pers and makes habitable the west coast of Nor- 
way, that would otherwise be desolate and inhos- 
pitable to any human being. The Baltic Ocean 
and the Gulf of Bothnia also appear to contribute 
to this milder climate. While Laplanders live 
and thrive in their own proper country, in the 
extreme north of Russia, Siberia and the British 
possessions, no race, Lapp or Eskimo, has ever 
really flourished. 

Short as the summer season is, it is said that rye 
"planted in the beginning or middle of June at- 
tains the height of seven and eight feet early in 
August, having reached ninety-six inches in eight 
or nine weeks^ and, when first planted, grows at 



REINDEER-LAND 65 

the rate of three inches a day.'' This is because 
of the heat and the long days. Possibly the same 
thing might occur in some equally north latitudes 
in America could the grain be planted; but it 
must be remembered that, in the vicinity of Hud- 
son's Bay, even south of the Arctic Circle, as in 
northern Siberia, the snow remains on the ground 
nearly all the year round, and even where it goes 
off the frost continues too deep in the soil to allow 
of grain-planting. 

The long twilight of evening in the far north is 
always interesting and for a time charming to the 
traveler who comes from an un-Arctic country. 
These twilights are quite as beautiful throughout 
Norway as higher up in Lapland, and have some- 
times a surpassing loveliness, because of the long- 
drawri-out sunsets in regions where the sun sets 
in the neighborhood of ten or eleven o'clock and 
rises again at one or two in the morning. Every 
description of red, gold and violet hue is penciled 
on the front and sides of the varying clouds. Pic- 
tures are then to be seen, hung both high and low, 
in the western heavens such as no human painter 
can put on canvas. Some of these sunsets, espe- 
cially on the western coast of northern Norway, 
are more gorgeous and entrancing than even the 
aurora borealis. 

Wild Game and Birds in Lapland. — There is 
no longer an abundance of wild game in Lapland, 
owing to the severity of the winters, the growing 
sparseness of the woods and the gun of the hunts- 
men. Ptarmigan, willow grouse, ripe and the 
capercailzie (which is the largest of the grouse 



66 REINDEER-LAND 

tribe) are nearly all the birds that can be called 
game-birds, but they furnish real sport to the gen- 
uine sportsman. The capercailzie is especially hard 
to find without a good dog, as it knows how to 
hide and also how to run for protection, but it can 
be hunted from August to March (now, from 
the beginning of September). It is a large 
bird, weighing from ten to fifteen pounds and is 
excellent food. English sportsmen are particular- 
ly fond of hunting this bird. The song of the 
male bird consists of three notes. The first is 
**pellep, pellep" repeated four times; then ''kleek- 
op*' like a chuckle; and then a queer low noise, 
not easily put into words. Bird language is al- 
ways interesting, but in this case is so chiefly to 
the hunters. There is also the hjerpe, or hazel- 
hen, which is more easily hunted. The Lapps 
have a legend that the hjerpe was once the largest 
bird in the forest, and that his size offended the 
vanity of the other birds, who flew at him, and 
each tore a piece out of his flesh, and ate it ; where- 
upon he became small as he now is, while the other 
birds grew larger from the white flesh of the 
hjerpe, which white flesh then appeared near the 
breast-bone of the other birds. 

Among the birds in Lapland, other than game 
birds, there are many. The reader will probably 
be surprised to learn how in such a cold clime 
birds of plumage and song are content to live 
their little lives. There are there, for example, 
the Siberian jay, the gerfalcon, northern tit, bram- 
bling, great spotted woodpecker, pine-grossbeak, 
blue-throated warbler, sedge-warbler, blackcap, 



REINDEER-LAND 67 

windchat, redstart, hedge-sparrow, mealy redpole, 
red-throated pipit, dotterel, golden plover, bar- 
tailed gotwit, spotted redshank, red-necked phal- 
arope, ruff, great gray shrike, as well as the gos- 
hawk, hawk-owl, rough-legged buzzard, snowy 
owl, and golden eagle. 

As to animals, the wolves and minks of a 
former generation have almost passed away. 
Bears are scarce, but do exist. White, black and 
red foxes are to be found in considerable numbers. 
There are a few elk, which are the largest and 
ugliest of the deer family. They could be domes- 
ticated but are not. Wild reindeer are to be 
found in considerable numbers, but are now pro- 
tected by law until the year 1 907. Wild rein- 
deer hunting is more common in Norway proper 
and also in Sweden than in Lapland. There are 
probably on an average five hundred shot every 
season among the mountains in northern Norway, 
and sometimes as many as a thousand elk. In 
Sweden, in 1895, 1409 elks were killed, but their 
number is now diminishing. 

On the coast are myriads of eider-ducks, whose 
down furnishes wealth to those who gather it. 
These ducks are white-and-black when male, and 
brown when female, and are larger than Ameri- 
can wild ducks. They build their nests of marine 
plants carefully in the rocks, and line them with 
their soft white down, which is worth ten dollars 
per pound when ready for the market. It takes, 
however, four pounds of crude down to make one 
pound of a marketable quality. When down is 
picked from the ducks by hand, it loses its elastic!- 



68 REINDEER-LAND 

ty, so that it is gathered from the nests. Two 
pounds of down, as found in the nests, may be 
pressed between one's two hands, and yet is suf- 
ficient to make a bedquilt. 

The Lapps are good hunters and fond of it, 
and the growing scarcity of game makes them all 
the more tenacious about securing what there is. 
The two main places where they go to sell their 
skins and game-food are Vitangi and Kengis; 
from there they are shipped by packs to Tornea, 
and thence reach Stockholm and the rest of the 
Scandinavian world. 

The only real "fun'' a Laplander has in hunt- 
ing for game is when he goes after bear. A bear 
hunt furnishes enough excitement for encamp- 
ment talk for a month. A Lapp believes that the 
polar bear is the most gifted of animal beings, 
whom they ought not to destroy when asleep. It 
is said that they formerly asked his pardon with 
tears for taking his life. 

A writer gives this account of bear-hunting: 
"When a track is found, the bear is promptly 
ringed. That is, the track is not followed up, but 
a man on skis (snow-shoes) leaves it at right an- 
gles, and, working in slightly all the time towards 
the direction in which the bear was traveling, fin- 
ally hits the spoor (trail) again where he had left 
it. If he has not seen the spoor in the meanwhile, 
the bear is somewhere within that ring. There is 
no immediate hurry for the next move. Bears only 
shift their quarters two or three times during the 
course of the winter, and, if undisturbed, they will 
doze for a considerable while when once they have 



REINDEER-LAND 69 

settled down. So, if there is no immediate dan- 
ger of a heavy fall of snow to obliterate the spoor, 
the finder goes back and organizes the hunt at his 
leisure. 

"The number of hunters depends upon the two 
items of pluck and skill, but not more than four 
go as a general thing, as there is a distinctly com- 
mercial side to the business, and the fewer the 
guns the more there is to every share. The gov- 
ernment gives head-money; the merchant will 
pay anything between £4 and £10 English for the 
cleaned skins ; and the beef, too, is an asset of val- 
ue. A third share in a good bear is enough for a 
Lapp to marry on and set up a tidy farm, if he 
happens to be economical. 

"The winter light may be gray and poor, but 
the snow looms white, and the spoor reads like a 
book. A bear breaks through any crust, and 
plunges elbow-deep at every stride. His belly 
trails along the snow and ploughs a great furrow. 
It takes the drifts of a gale to cover that track. 
But withal his highness is a scary person, and 
though he may sleep with shut eyes, he keeps open 
ears and active nose. So the callers have to tread 
with niceness and delicacy if they wish to make 
sure of an interview ; and even supposing that they 
carry the spoor with them up to the pile of tum- 
bled rocks where it ends, and the absence of back 
tracks shows his bearship at home, the hunt is by 
no means over then. The bear will know quite 
well that enemies are at hand, but he will not 
rush at them. He is no fool. On the contrary, 
he is an animal of infinite cunning and resource; 



70 REINDEER-LAND 

and he quite knows that in his stone redoubt there 
is at least one chance to three of brazening out 
the situation and wearing his own hide for anoth- 
er season. 

''It takes a man of much more recklessness, or 
ignorance of the consequences, than the average 
Lapp hunter to go into a cave of rocks and delib- 
erately invite a rough-and-tumble with a live 
brown-bear. But the hunters do their best to ir- 
ritate him from a distance. They fire single shots 
into the darkness in the hope of riling him suffi- 
ciently to make a rush, so that the other guns 
which remain loaded may drop him when he 
comes into the open. They do this from every di- 
rection on which the cave mouth opens, so as to 
give him every chance of feeling a shot. And, fin- 
ally, if this method fails, they light a bonfire on 
his front-door step and stand around on their 
skis to await results. It is by no means certain 
that the smoke will reach him, for there may be 
quite possibly an outward air-current, and the 
Lapps have produced their Rembrandtesque effect 
for no practical return. But if they have luck, 
and the stinging reek is too strong to be endured, 
then they have to stand by for quick shooting. The 
bear bolts like a rabbit, out of the firelight into 
the gloom, and in a matter of seconds he will be 
absorbed amongst the tree-stems of the forest. 
There is something uncanny, something almost 
devilish in the way a Northern bear can adopt in- 
visibility." 

Use of Snow-Shoes. — In the winter the snow 
is very deep; usually four or five, sometimes 



REINDEER-LAND 71 

twelve, feet on the level. When much snow 
first falls it is almost impassable by men or deer. 
In a few days, however, it settles and becomes 
sufficiently hard to bear snow-shoes, and also the 
reindeer, the feet, of the latter being so arranged 
by Nature that they do not sink deeply in the 
snow, if it be a little hardened. The snow-shoes 
(usually called skiSy or skees) used by the Lapp 
are superior to any others of the northern tribes 
of people. For example, by the Eskimos, or by 
North American Indians. They are extremely 
long, being from six or seven to, in some cases, 
sixteen feet in length. They are made of the 
wood of the fir tree, and are extremely thin 
(about one-third of an inch thick at the centre), 
tapering to a quarter of an inch at the end, and 
not over four or five inches wide, A loop of 
leather at the centre passes over the foot. The 
under-surface is as smooth as glass, but is fur- 
rowed, and both ends are pointed. With these 
snow-shoes Lapps may go on the level over deep 
snow at an astounding rate of progress, say aver- 
aging fifteen miles an hour. They also use them 
in crossing frozen lakes and rivers, although short- 
er ones are frequently employed for the latter pur- 
pose. They coast down-hill on them at a still 
quicker pace, but this is more difficult to do, and 
novices must then look out for accidents. Unless 
the snow is solid, a man must push himself along, 
or assist himself in his onward movements, by one 
or two stout sticks, or staves, held in either hand. 
In going up-hill the course must be zigzag, and 
then these staves are a necessity. The feet, with 



72 REINDEER-LAND 

the snow-shoes on them, are never raised, as the 
movement is w^hoUy a sliding and not a stepping 
one. 

Without snow-shoes, it would be next to impos- 
sible for Lapps to travel in winter, unless behind 
reindeer in the pulkas. Children are early taught 
to practice on snow-shoes and soon become ex- 
perts. It is not uncommon for a whole Lapp fam- 
ily to go to a church service on snow-shoes, some- 
times starting the night before, should the distance 
be very long, and stopping somewhere, perhaps 
to sleep on the snow, on the way. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Their Treasure of Treasures. 

"The Tiny Reindeer''. — Having said so much 
about these people who come daily into close con- 
tact with the pretty reindeer — the little, docile and 
lovable animals that go to make up their earthly 
wealth, and that have made the race of Lapps so 
famous the world over — let us now learn a little 
about these animals themselves. 

" Their reindeer form their riches. These their tents, 
Their robes, their beds, and all their homely wealth, 
Supply; their wholesome fare and cheerful cups." 

How pretty a herd of reindeer is can only be 
told by one when he has actually seen them min- 
gling together on the Arctic upland. At a distance, 
their gray color is so nearly that of the numerous 
rocks, which usually abound in any Lapland lo- 
cality, that it is not easy to distinguish which are 



REINDEER-LAND 73 

deer and which are granitic uplifts. For this rea- 
son many photographs of a herd do not show the 
animals distinctly, as in the pictures they are read- 
ily mistaken for rocks. They are little creatures, 
truly enough, being only about three feet high or 
less, but with enormous antlers, that, when ^'in 
the velvet," (so-called when the antlers are 
young) look like boughs of trees, moss-grown. 
Male and female alike have antlers, which is the 
case only with the reindeer, and not with any oth- 
er portion of the deer family. In other countries 
all female deer are without prongs. The antlers 
are smaller in the female reindeer than in the 
male ; more slender and less branched. 

The reindeer is a distinct name for that species 
of the ^'barren-ground caribou," whose home is 
in northern Europe and Asia. In America the 
term '^caribou," not reindeer, is given to what 
many believe is, practically, the same species, al- 
though the likeness has not always been recog- 
nized by writers upon mammalia. The Scandi- 
navian reindeer is the only domesticated deer, it 
is true, but many investigators believe that the 
general type is one, and that the caribou could be 
domesticated if time enough were allowed for the 
process. In America, the caribou species is to be 
found far in the north, in Greenland, or the Par- 
ry Islands, or in Ellesmere Land, or to the west 
of Baffin's Bay. A few have been found wild in 
Alaska. What are called "caribou" may also be 
found south of the limits named, but they are the 
"woodland" species, which are said not to be the 
same. 



74 REINDEER-LAND 

The color of the Lapland reindeer is usually a 
gray — a slate color in fact — closely akin to Lap- 
land rock, though some are lighter in shade, and 
some have brown, black or russet spots on the 
rump, which are not distinct spots but rather 
merging, or confluent, colors. The sexes are 
about evenly divided, the males, however, being 
kept for draft-service, and the females being more 
often used for food. It is said that only the males 
are adapted for draft. 

One peculiarity of the use of the reindeer, 
which from its occupation as a draft-animal has 
been called '^the camel of the north," is that it is 
the only member of the deer family which has ever 
been thoroughly domesticated. All others are 
wild, or, if tamed, are not put to domestic use. 
Some have supposed that other deer, and especial- 
ly the American caribou, could be domesticated, 
but it might take centuries of effort in this direc- 
tion to accomplish it. 

It cannot be said that the reindeer carries its 
head well, for it puts it forward when moving 
and its ears lie far back on the withers. But, 
when at rest, the male deer, especially, is a lordly 
animal, though without traces of arrogance. His 
eyes are mild, but he is averse to strangers and is 
only thoroughly docile to his owner. The Lapp 
name for reindeer is raingo. 

It takes time, not months, but often two years 
or more, to thoroughly train a male reindeer, so 
that he is to be depended upon to do good sledge- 
work. The process is begun when he is three 



REINDEER-LAND 75 

years old, and when he is five he is usually con- 
sidered satisfactorily ''broken in," but not before. 

The ears of the reindeer are generally branded, 
each owner having his particular mark. If it 
were not so they could not be separated when the 
herds intermix. These marks of ownership — 
trade-marks, as it were — are registered with the 
government of Norway or Sweden. 

The reindeer has large hoofs, wide apart, so 
that it sinks as little as possible in the snow; is 
stout of limb, has a short head but wide muzzle ; 
is covered with a coarse thick hair in winter, 
often two inches long, although in summer it is 
thinner and softer. The animal's hardiness may 
be best appreciated by a statement of the fact 
that it is never housed. Be the weather 50 de- 
grees below zero, the w^ind a gale and snows deep, 
still it 'likes it," and takes so much apparent pleas- 
ure in finding its own food that it will not eat 
moss when previously gathered by hand, unless 
under most exceptional circumstances. It will 
dig deep into the snow — five or six feet sometimes 
— to get moss; and it is a singular sight to see a 
score or more of reindeer getting their meal in 
this manner, with only their short tails sticking 
out above the high drifts. Or they will rear up 
on their hind legs, put their forehoofs against a 
tree, and pull down and eat the tender foliage 
from its branches. 

Reindeer-moss is the reindeer's chief diet, and 
Nature has placed that moss nearly everywhere in 
Lapland. The moss is a low-growing plant, dull 
white in color, with short roots, and is very nu- 



76 REINDEER-LAND 

tritious. When boiled with reindeer milk it is 
edible for the Lapp himself. It covers the moun- 
tains with a dense coat, just as gorse covers the 
north Devonshire hills. Without this moss the 
reindeer would soon become extinct. Whatever 
else it may eat — other lichens, or twigs, or grass — 
it must have moss. The botanical name of the 
moss is Cladonia rangiferina. A similar moss, 
with a different name, flourishes on the coast of 
Labrador, and in Alaska, and wherever the rein- 
deer family is found. A singular fact it may 
be, but a fact which shows the wisdom and pre- 
vision of an overruling Providence, that here in 
the frozen north, where there is such a wonderful 
little animal, adapted to man's every need, the ex- 
act food necessary for its subsistence appears in 
abundance. It is the only plant-life that does 
grow there in sufficient quantities to sustain this 
kind of anim.al life. Climate does not affect it, 
snow and ice do not kill it, but it grows on, 
ready for the only ruminant that craves it. 

Where there is no moss, the reindeer dies, or 
rather, it goes and seeks it, no matter at what 
distance it must travel to secure the food. Left to 
itself, in a wild state, it always flourishes where 
there is plenty of moss. In fact in Lapland (and 
now in Alaska) , the increase in the size of the herd, 
when too many are not killed for food, is some- 
thing remarkable. In seasons of intense cold and 
very deep snow, when moss is inaccessible, the 
death-rate is just as high in proportion as the 
birth-rate in good season. In consequence the au- 
tumn is always an anxious time for the Lapps, be- 



REINDEER-LAND 77 

cause if the ground freezes hard, and the rain on 
the moss turns into ice before the snow falls, it 
will make it impossible for reindeer to secure their 
food throughout the long winter. They can bur- 
row through the snow, but cannot gather moss 
beneath it, that being frozen through and 
through, and turned into ice crystals. 

The reindeer are excellent swimmers, as their 
bodies are buoyant, and they can cross rapid cur- 
rents. They have an acute sense of smell and 
hearing, this being intended by Nature to allow 
them to escape from enemies, animal or human. 
When attacked by wolves, they kick furiously and 
seldom fail to come out best in the contest. Their 
worst enemy is the gadfly, which gets under their 
coat of fur, and lays eggs there. Inflammation 
follows, and the larvae, as soon as they come out 
from the eggs, feed on the flesh. The reindeer 
frequently migrates to avoid their attacks. 

We have already stated that, in certain terri- 
torial portions of Lapland, the reindeer constitute 
a large animal family. They are in fact more 
plentiful in Lapland-Sv/eden, than cattle in simi- 
lar limits in England. In one province alone 
there are probably seventy-five thousand reindeer 
and, as stated, in Swedish territory, there were, a 
few years since, as many as two hundred and 
twenty thousand. 

Milking a female reindeer is a curious process. 
She does not like the act, though she may have 
had it performed a hundred times. If it be prac- 
ticable, she is first driven into an enclosure, then 
lassoed and held fast. The milking is usually done 



78 REINDEER-LAND 

by the girls of the household, who milk into small 
milk-pails. Usually the quantity of milk obtained 
is about one pint, but it is exceedingly rich. It 
is placed, after the milking, in bladders, and has 
a syrupy appearance, and when drank is preferred 
by many Lapps when sour. At mealtime a bowl 
of it is passed around, and those who care for it 
dip in their spoon, and take it, a little at a time. 
The milk is sometimes made into butter, which 
is of a white color and not very appetizing, but 
it is rather the rule to drink it at meals, or make 
it into cheese. The cheeses are flat and round, 
about five inches in diameter, only an inch thick, 
strongly odorous, yet are probably healthy as food. 
However, even the Lapps do not care half so much 
for the cheese for its edible qualities as they do 
to use its oily substance for frost-bites, for which 
it is a specific. 

Here is an interesting description of the milk- 
ing of the reindeer by a recent traveler, and the 
account gives us considerable more than usual 
book-information : ^'While the women were put- 
ing the household things in order inside the huts, 
we helped the men build a kind of scaffolding of 
birch-stems in order to keep the provisions out of 
reach of the dogs, and mended the old fence about 
the inclosure in which the reindeer are milked. 
Having got the camp in order, my companion and 
I were sitting outside, looking at the magnificent 
scenery. The camp was beautifully situated on 
the slope of a fell ridge in the upper birch region. 
Below, the Goos River widened into a calm pond, 
while above there was a series of rapids and cas- 



REINDEER-LAND 79 

cades. On all sides the horizon was bounded by 
snow-clad fells, whose peaks were gilded by the 
evening sun. Suddenly sharp barking was heard 
in the distance, followed by the shout through the 
camp, 'The herd is coming!' All helped to drive 
the herd into the inclosure — young and old, men 
and women, even the little children, hurrying 
down, the men carrying the lasso on their arms, 
the women holding a wooden scoop, others a kind 
of large wooden pail, a keg-like vessel closed by a 
sliding cover, while our hostess had her baby 
thrown over her shoulders, my companion and I 
running along with the crowd. Placing our- 
selves on both sides of the entrance to the inclo- 
sure, at some distance, we stopped to wait for the 
herd. 

''Looking in the direction from which the bark- 
ing was heard, we observed on the sum.mit of the 
nearest mountain-ridge, against the horizon, 
something like a moving thicket, carried, as it 
were, by a swift current down the mountainside. 
Soon we distinguished the graceful forms of hun- 
dreds of reindeer, as they, with elastic motions, 
leaping and bounding, came tearing toward the 
camp, the dogs stretching like ropes along the 
ground on each side of the herd to keep it togeth- 
er. We crouched behind stones and bushes so as 
not to frighten the half-wild animals. With a 
good deal of running, gesturing, and shouting, 
the herd was finally brought into the inclosure, 
only a few of the wildest animals escaping over 
the fell, past some of the little children. . . . 
Rushing into the inclosure in an unbroken stream. 



8o REINDEER-LAND 

of more than a thousand animals, the herd did 
not cease running — the reindeer is always on the 
move, except at its regular resting-times — but con- 
tinued in a circle against the sun. The reindeer 
in these circular motions always runs against the 
sun ; if it runs with it, it is a sign of disease of the 
brain. In the midst of the reindeer, leaping, 
bounding and butting in a friendly way, while 
giving out their peculiar grunting sound, the pic- 
turesque figures of our Lapponian friends were 
seen, surrounded by a thicket of horns. 

*'Our hostess, having hung her baby to a birch 
in the middle of the inclosure, stood, like a num- 
ber of other women, mostly girls, with a wooden 
scoop in her hand, ready to milk the first of the 
female reindeer caught ; while at the outskirts of 
the inclosure stood a number of children with 
large pails to receive the milk from the scoops, the 
smaller children either running about playing 
outside the camp, or giving salt and angelica to 
some of the tamest animals. The most important 
actors on the scene, however, were the men mov- 
ing about slowly in the midst of the herd, holding 
the lasso behind their back in the right hand, and 
looking sharply at the running animals. As quick 
as lightning a lasso whizzed through the air, the 
frightened animals recoiling and then increasing 
their speed. When the lasso hit the mark, the 
cow was hauled in, and tied to a birch while the 
milking was done. So they kept on for nearly 
two hours. 

^'The quantity of milk yielded by each animal 
is very small, at the most about a teacupful, but 



REINDEER-LAND 8i 

it is of a very high nutritive quality. The milk- 
ing, which is by no means regular, is done, if pos- 
sible, once a day. In winter-time there is of course 
no milking. To prevent the calves from sucking 
their mothers, pieces of bone are tied into their 
mouths, or the udders are besmeared with tar. 
Some of the Lapps think it sinful to milk the rein- 
deer and thus deprive the calves of their food. 

''The milking done, the herd was again let out 
on the fell, accompanied by fresh herders and 
dogs. As soon as the outlet was opened, the herd 
rushed out, and dashed away with the speed of 
the wind. Bewildered by the general confusion 
of the inclosure, a number of calves were left be- 
hind, running about, grunting for their mothers. 
After a few moments one of the cows came back, 
running, grunting and smelling for its young, and 
soon all the calves had been found by their 
mothers." 

The natural impulse of the reindeer of the 
mountains is to go toward the coast in the sum- 
mer, and the reason for this instinct has never 
been explained. It certainly exists, however, and 
is ineradicable. In the winter there is no such 
instinct. The time for this migration is in June 
or July, when they start off suddenly of their own 
accord, and there is then nothing for the herds- 
men to do but to follow and direct them to such 
part of the coast as it seems advisable to reach. 
They permit of such direction, but will not be 
moved from their general purpose. The Ameri- 
can caribou has the same impulse for voluntary 
travel toward some distant point, but its instinct 



82 REINDEER-LAND 

seems to be equally great in the winter as in the 
summer, as it invariably points its head southward 
in the summer and northward in the winter, and 
regardless of any seacoast magnet. 

When a reindeer is to be killed, he is lassoed 
and thrown to the ground. The sheath-knife 
quickly comes out from the belt of the slayer, or, 
if convenient, he may use a longer and narrower 
knife. An incision is made between the deer's 
forelegs, and it is stabbed to the heart. The las- 
soing of the deer is an expert performance that 
rarely misses its mission. Sometimes the rope, or 
leather thong, is thrown tfety or forty yards, but 
the noose at the end invariab^ catches the antlers. 

To many it seems improbable that any fine and 
strong threads may be made out of reindeer ten- 
dons, yet every Lapp wife knows how to do it. 
She strips the tendon when it is moist into fine 
fibres, as fine as flax, and from these draws out a 
thread. This is twisted into two, three or four 
threads, according to the desired strength of the 
cord, and is rolled upon her cheek with her hand. 
The thread thus made, if coarse, is very strong, 
in fact almost unbreakable, and with it nearly all 
of the sewing of skins and of coarse garments is 
performed. It is also a lasting thread, and stands 
wear a long time without decay. 

Reindeer bones and antlers are made into va- 
rious kinds of implements. The writer saw in 1904 
at Gellivara a complete and usable bicycle made 
entirely of reindeer bones, the handle bars being of 
the antlers, and the chain of small bones riveted 
together. The spokes and rims of the wheels were 



REINDEER-LAND 83 

of bones so tightly riveted that they were, appar- 
ently, as strong as steel frames. It is needless to 
say the manufacturer was not a Lapp, who is 
far from being an inventive genius or mechanic, 
but a Swede. 

Driving the Reindeer. — The Lapps drive, but 
do not ride upon, the reindeer, perhaps because 
they are too heavy burdens. Eighty pounds are 
as much as the average deer will carry comforta- 
bly. In harnessing a deer to a sledge the process 
is simple enough, as there are no shafts. There 
is a broad collar-strap, which, after passing 
around the neck, rum '^'^wn between both fore- 
legs, and then low to me ground between the hind 
legs, which it does not touch, to a stout leather 
ring on the front part of the sledge, such ring be- 
ing only a few inches from the ground. The fast- 
ening and unfastening, therefore, occupies but a 
few seconds of time. This is all there is of *'har- 
ness,'' except the leather thong by which the ani- 
mal is guided, which is fastened to the antlers and 
held in the driver's hand. There are no brakes 
upon the sledge. When going down hill the driv- 
er uses his feet for that purpose, but sometimes 
employs a stick. There is a space of several feet 
between the deer and sledge, so that there is no 
danger of its ever getting upon the deer's heels. 

The sledges (piilkas) used by the Lapps look 
not unlike those used by the Eskimos, drawn by 
dogs. They are shaped much like an Indian 
canoe, being about six feet long, and just wide 
enough for one man to sit in comfortably; and 
they are extremely light. The man usually sits 



84 REINDEER-LAND 

flat in the bottom, but sometimes he has a seat, 
and, if he be wealthy, it may be a cushioned seat. 
It is difficult for a beginner to keep balance in 
one of these pulkas when going fast and making 
turns. 

All Lapp sledges are well-made, and can stand 
hard usage. Even when they collide against a 
hidden tree stump, and, perhaps, upset — although 
this is a rare occurrence — they seem to suffer lit- 
tle injury. They are ribbed inside, and the front 
of the keel is made high on purpose to ride over 
logs, stones or other objects that may happen to 
be concealed by the snow. There are higher 
sledges upon runners used by a few Finnish Lap- 
landers and by natives of northern Siberia, which 
are more comfortable for the foreigner who may 
be obliged to employ them, but they are not so 
safe as the regular pulkas of the regular European 
Lapps. 

One person occupies the sledge ; it is too narrow 
for two. The rule is to drive before it a single 
reindeer. Several are sometimes attached, when 
the snow is very heavy, and there is hard hill- 
climbing, but this is a rare occurrence, as one 
deer can carry a man and a sledge, with whatever 
else he chooses to put in, at a high rate of speed, 
for a long distance. When Santa Claus goes on 
his travels he may use eight, but, while he might 
need them in a foreign land, he scarcely would in 
Lapland. 

As to the usual distance covered in a day, it 
varies, but eight or ten miles an hour is an aver- 
age gait, and a hundred and fifty miles a day is a 



REINDEER-LAND 85 

journey only made when there seems to be neces- 
sity for it, and then the journey consumes about 
eighteen hours. In 1769, Pictet, a Swiss philoso- 
pher, who went to Lapland to observe the transit 
of Venus, in a race made with three light sledges, 
drawn by two reindeer each, found that he could 
cover easily nineteen miles per hour. In 1699, it 
is recorded that an officer with important dis- 
patches actually drove one reindeer eight hundred 
miles in forty-eight hours, but the deer fell dead 
at the end of the journey. A painting of this 
deer still hangs in the palace at Drotningholm. It 
has been officially noted that in i896-'7, during 
an exceedingly cold winter, a number of the rein- 
deer brought from Siberia were driven two thou- 
sand miles in Alaska, the therm_ometer part of the 
time being from 43 degrees to 73 degrees below 
zerc. and they were none the worse for having 
made the longest journey of any reindeer so far 
as has been recorded. The country traveled over 
was the worst possible for the trial. The object 
of the journey was to see if all parts of Alaska, 
ever such as white men have never traversed, 
might not be accessible to reindeer, and the con- 
clusion was altogether favorable.^ 

^'he animals are so hardy that they can easily 
wo ^ eighteen out of twenty- four hours and be 
agam in as fine condition after six hours of rest. 
If they need water upon a journey and do not 
come to It, they will eat snow as they travel along. 
Sometimes, when the snow is heavy, and they 
grow weary, they will stop and lie down in it a 
few minutes or more, and then get up and proceed 



86 REINDEER-LAND 

as if refreshed. No animal can recuperate after 
fatigue so quickly. 

When pulling a heavy load, say of five hun- 
dred pounds, reindeer sledges will make about for- 
ty miles per day. Sometimes snows are so fierce, 
and so fine, that Lapps and reindeer must stop, or 
lose their way. The driver then tries to find shel- 
ter, if possible, upon the still side of a precipice, 
and may stay there for a day or two until the 
storm abates. Such an occasion is likely to come 
at any time during the winter. 

In going down very steep hills, the reindeer is 
unfastened, and attached to the rear end of the 
sledge by a thong fastened to his antlers. As he 
does not enjoy being pulled by the horns, he 
holds back enough to break the force of the de- 
scent. A novice at driving a reindeer usually gets 
thrown out a few times, and has what he calls a 
^'runaway.^' Even the best broken reindeer proves 
refractory and is difficult to manage. 

When a number of Lapps are traveling togeth- 
er in sledges they go single file, and a dozen of 
them may stretch along for a quarter of a mile, af- 
fording an odd enough sight. Silently but rapidly 
these airy steeds, with swift pace, make a straight 
line across the snow toward some distant point, 
and appear to enjoy the sport of it quite as much 
as the drivers themselves; perhaps more so, for 
they keep warm, while the Lapps often find it a 
pretty serious matter to ward off the frost-bites, 
especially upon the nose or face, for when the ther- 
mometer drops below the forty-below-zero mark. 



REINDEER-LAND 87 

and there is a strong wind, it is extremely trying 
to the exposed skin. 



CHAPTER V. 

Strange Phenomena. 

The Aurora Borealis. — The phenomenon of 
the aurora borealis, more properly '^aurora polar- 
is," or northern lights, as they are generally 
termed with us, is to be witnessed in all its gran- 
deur in Southern Lapland. The more northerly, 
however, one goes, the less is it likely to be fre- 
quent or impressive. As everyone who has given 
the subject attention knows, it does not emanate 
from the true north, or true south, pole, but from 
what are called the magnetic poles, one of which, 
in the northern hemisphere, is at a point just north 
of King William's Land, in about 70 degrees, 50 
minutes of north latitude, and 93 degrees, 43 min- 
utes of west longitude, while another of less force 
seems to be located north of Siberia. A direct 
north line drawn from about the centre of Ne- 
braska toward the true north pole will cut the 
chief north magnetic pole som.e twelve hundred 
miles short of the true pole. There are sim.ilar 
magnetic poles in the southern hem.isphere, where 
the aurora is also visible. In the vicinity of these 
magnetic poles there ought to be the miost strik- 
ing exam.ple of the aurora, because they are cer- 
tainly connected with the phenomenon, and such 
travelers have found to be the case. A study of 
the subject shows that the phenomenon does not 



88 REINDEER-LAND 

follow strict lines of latitudes, owing to dips and 
curves in the magnetic meridians, which the skill 
of scientists have not yet explained. Still, general- 
ly speaking, auroras are seen most frequently in 
lands approximately near the magnetic poles. 
Therefore, in Canada the displays are far more 
numerous than in England, and in Greenland they 
are more brilliant than in any European country. 
After Greenland they are most vivid and impres- 
sive in Lapland. 

Given the right conditions, an aurora — ^which, 
as is now generally understood, is wholly an elec- 
trical display, akin to lightning but not origina- 
ting in rainstorms and destitute of thunder — is a 
most imposing sight wherever it is seen. During 
the long winter nights in Lapland, travelers may 
study all the varieties of this display; though of 
auroras, there as well as elsewhere, it is to be said 
that no two are exactly alike. Probably during 
some of the long days of summer there are also 
electrical displays in the atmosphere, but, of 
course, such are invisible. During the Arctic night 
the Laplander in his pulka has many an opportun- 
ity to view the glories of those streamers that 
scintillate and flash from the magnetic poles to 
the zenith, and serve to illumine so beautifully the 
sky, the sea and the land. What his real thoughts 
are at such a time we may never know, but the 
pity is that lovers of the beautiful elsewhere are 
deprived of the spectacle. 

What a wonderful sight the aurora is need not 
be told to one who has seen it in all its marvelous 
and singular loveliness. To those utterly unac- 



REINDEER-LAND 89 

quainted with science, and who have no means of 
conjecturing causes, it would bring apprehension 
of great disasters, were it not of such common oc- 
currence. To the Laplander it is an old and fa- 
miliar matter and we fear he does not appreciate 
it. 

Sometimes only one or two auroras are to be 
seen in Lapland during an entire winter, but, in 
other winters, on almost every night for days at a 
time the heavens are resplendent with them, and 
they range in appearance from the merely fasci- 
nating to the unspeakably sublime. "When the 
auroral crown is fully formed," says Richard 
Proctor (i837-'88), ''and the vault of heaven 
is covered with the auroral banners, waving hither 
and thither silently, now fading from view, anon 
glowing with more intense splendor, the mind is 
not less impressed with a sense of the wondrous 
powers which surround us than when, as the 
forked lightning leaps from the thunder clouds, 
the whole heavens glow with violet light, and 
then sink suddenly into darkness. The solemn 
stillness of the auroral display is as impressive in 
its kind as the crushing peal of the thunderbolt." 

''At times," says Pierre Martin, who was upon 
an Arctic voyage in 1653, and who observed many 
of them in Spitzbergen, which is north of Lap- 
land, "they are simply diffused gleams, or lumi- 
nous patches; at others, quivering rays of pure 
white, which run across the sky, starting from the 
horizon as if an invisible pencil was being drawn 
over the celestial vault. At times it stops in its 
course; the incomplete rays do not reach the ze- 



90 REINDEER-LAND 

nith, but the aurora continues at some other point ; 
a bouquet of rays, darts forth, spreads out like a 
fan, then becomes pale and dies out. At other 
times long golden draperies float above the head 
of the spectator and take a thousand folds and un- 
dulations, as if agitated by the wind." 

Lieutenant Peary says that in his extreme north 
wanderings, on shipboard, he saw fewer auroras 
and much less brilliant ones than when farther 
south. He describes one of the finest of these dis- 
plays as follows: ''At first the aurora extended in 
n brilliant white, waving curtain, north and south 
across the strait, its bottom seeming to brush the 
masthead, then the curtain disappeared, and scur- 
rying wreaths and streams of pale amorphous light 
came rushing northward over the ship, and, form- 
ing in serpentine folds, waved and fluttered, 
waxed and waned, separated and ran together 
again, with a rapid, fluttering motion, which I 
can compare only to the rapid opening and shut- 
ting of a Japanese fan. And, finally, agitated by 
some ghostly whirlwind, till every fold shot green 
and gold and violet and crimson flame, they broke 
in flying fragments, and dissolved into faint, lumi- 
nous clouds." 

Nansen, in his Farthest North, gives many 
beautiful descriptions of the aurora, perhaps none 
better than the following. It will be noted that 
he even saw it to the south of him. ''The deck 
was brightly illuminated by it, and reflections of 
its light played all over the eyes while the sky 
was blazing with it, but it was brightest in the 
south; high up in that direction glowed waving 



REINDEER-LAND 91 

masses of fire. No words can depict the glory 
that met our eyes. The glowing-fire masses had 
divided into glistening, many-colored bands, which 
were writhing and twisting across the sky both 
in the south and north. The rays sparkled with 
the purest, most crystalline rainbow colors, chiefly 
violet-red, or carmine, and the clearest green. 
Most frequently the rays of the arch were red at 
the ends, and changed higher up into sparkling 
green which, quite at the top, turned darker and 
went over into blue or violet before disappearing 
in the blue of the sky; or the rays of the one and 
the same arch might change from clear red to clear 
green, coming and going as if driven by a storm. 
It was an endless phantasmagoria of sparkling col- 
or, surpassing anything that one can dream." 

Without doubt auroras are due to electrical dis- 
charges in the upper air. All kinds of theories 
have been formed as to how these discharges are 
produced, but none may be said to be settled, al- 
though the finest displays are believed to be on oc- 
casions when the sun's surface is marked with an 
unusual num.ber of sun-spots. It is certain that 
they occur within and not without the limits of 
the earth's atmosphere, and are, therefore, not so 
many miles above the surface of the earth. They 
have sometimes been seen between the observer 
and a point of land not two miles distant. 

The first historical mention which we seem to 
have of an aurora is of the one seen in London on 
January 30, 1560, which was described as having 
the appearance of ''burning spears," but it is to be 
assumed that the real phenomenon is as old as the 



92 REINDEER-LAND 

present stage of the earth and the sun, and that 
the Laplanders have seen it ''from time immemo- 
rial." 

The Midnight Sun.— To the Lapp the Mid- 
night Sun is not a wonder. He views it every 
year of his life, and to him it is as natural a specta- 
cle as the extremely brilliant stars of the long 
nights of the Arctic winter. To others who live 
far south of the Arctic Circle, it is a stupendous 
wonder, and, the first time it is viewed, it seems 
almost a miracle. The explanation of it, how- 
ever, is exceedingly simple. The inclination of 
the axis of the earth turns so much toward the sun 
in the summer that one sees the sun the whole 
twenty-four hours — that is, all the time. It is as 
simple a proposition as that of watching any natu- 
ral object at a distance, which appears to move, 
but which only transcribes a circle and does not 
get out of sight. Because the earth revolves, the 
sun must seem to move around it, but it may seem 
to move around the horizon just as well as from 
horizon to zenith. Accordingly the apparent 
swinging motion in mid-summer in the Arctic re- 
gion is around the horizon, and not around the 
earth in the usual overhead direction. At mid- 
night the sun is due north, always ; it then curves 
gradually upward while it proceeds eastward and 
southward, and at twelve o^clock at noon is due 
south and a third way up the sky. Then it sinks 
towards the western horizon, with the same gen- 
tle curve, and reaches the beginning point in the 
north at midnight without actual disappearance. 

Just before twelve o^clock at night, when the 



REINDEER-LAND 93 

sun IS visible, it has a pale-yellowish appearance, if 
the atmosphere be normal, and its faint radiance 
is that of evening light. One can look directly at 
it, sometimes for only a minute, but sometimes 
steadily, depending upon the condition of the at- 
mosphere. The latter at times gives it a ruddy 
appearance, not unfrequently as red as blood, just 
as we often see it in more southerly climes during 
a time of drought. In any event, however, it 
emits a weaker light than is usual before sundown 
in regions outside of the Arctic Circle. 

When twelve o'clock midnight comes, the sun 
seems to stand still; absolutely still. Up to that 
moment you are sure it has been moving to the 
north, but now there are five minutes of strange 
suspense; peculiar sensations come over the be- 
holder, as if the clock of Time had suddenly 
ceased to beat; the whole landscape is hushed. 
Then, five minutes past twelve, there is a rebound, 
as it were. The sun again moves! The whole 
sky grows lighter. The earth is re-illumined with 
the light of day. Birds that were still begin to 
warble. A strange, supernal light, such as the 
preceding hour did not have, creeps over land and 
sea. The clouds have the violet glows of the 
morning sunshine. Nature begins to wear a smile. 
The sun is now the goddess of the day, riding up- 
on the chariot of the morn. Every hilltop has a 
new garment. Life has resumed its accustomed 
buoyancy. The atmosphere is redolent with the 
breath of the sunrise. 

The writer has seen the phenomenon just ex- 
actly as above described and will never forget it. 



94 REINDEER-LAND 

It IS certainly worth going several thousand miles 
to see. But it is a great mistake to suppose that 
it is only to be seen, or that it can be better seen, 
from the North Cape than from anywhere else. 
The reason for the popular impression is that for 
many years the North Cape has been the most 
accessible point from which travelers might view 
it; m.ade so by special steamer excursions from 
England, Germany and Norway. But large num- 
bers go there annually and fail to see it, because of 
the fogginess of the Norwegian coast. We once 
met two Am.ericans at Trondhjem who had been 
to the North Cape for five successive years and 
had not once viewed the Midnight Sun. If it be 
practicable, it is better for the traveler to view it 
from Lapland, fifty miles away from the coast at 
least, as there he will be more sure of viewing 
the spectacle, and will save the tedious sea-voyage 
to and from the North Cape. 

Others who have seen the Midnight Sun have 
described it in more or less glowing terms, but all 
are agreed that what is so common a sight to a 
Laplander is, to a foreigner, the most impressive 
of spectacles. One brief description by an Amer- 
ican lady is given to show that, while the lan- 
guage may vary, according to the temperament of 
the beholder, the impressions of grandeur and 
beauty are ever the same. 

''Over the vast dome," says the writer, in Nor- 
way Nights and Russian DaySy "almost to the 
zenith, the gray cloud-masses floated away in long 
fleecy scrolls of crimson and orange, in feathery- 
filaments of transparent radiance, in downy flecks 



REINDEER-LAND 95 

of deep purple edged with gold. Points and peaks 
both of mountains and clouds, in infinite irregu- 
larities, 'with sunfire garlanded,' sentinelled the 
sea, and stretched far northward till lost in trans- 
lucent mist. Sea-birds disported themselves on 
the flashing waves, their sombre feathers trans- 
muted to tropical irridescence. The sun slowly 
descended to the edge of the horizon ; — and then, 
with one kiss on the radiant water, rose with elas- 
tic rebound! The dying and the new-born day 
clasp hands in mutual embrace as they pass 
through the duplicate golden portal; every ripple 
is a jewelled witness, every quiver of air an echo, 
of the celestial drama. The beauty and the mar- 
vel of the scene brought silence upon all our lit- 
tle company ; each one seemed afraid to speak lest 
he should break the spell, until, by imperceptible 
gradations of form and hue, the clouds were again 
lost in full blaze of light." 

The Midnight Sun is not a'^miracle of Nature" 
but a plain fact. It may be seen anywhere on any 
continent or on the sea, within the Arctic Circle, 
either north or south. Still it is a charming phe- 
nomenon, and plainly teaches that, while the earth 
is round and revolves upon its axis, it also keeps 
its pole in one certain direction, while it swings 
on its orbit around the great light-centre of our lo- 
cal universe. 



96 REINDEER-LAND 

CHAPTER VI. 

Conclusion. 

The End of the Lapps. — It would seem as if 
the Lapps — not the reindeer — ^will, in a future 
not so far away, become an extinct race. Like the 
Eskimos, they are not increasing but diminishing 
in number year by year. Forty years ago the 
Lapps numbered thirty thousand, and now it is 
thought there are not more than seventeen thou- 
sand at the most. One cause of this race decay 
may be polygamy, which is practiced to a limited 
extent. A direct cause is the excessive use of 
liquors, which constitutes their besetting vice. 
Another is the fact that they do not take suffi- 
ciently intelligent care of the children to insure 
their passing the tender years, when they may be- 
come hardened to the climatic and other severe 
conditions of Arctic life. The fact is that all na- 
tions in the extreme cold regions are losing their 
grip on race life, owing to increasing habits of in- 
toxication and indolence and kindred vices. They 
could retain vitality and grow in numbers despite 
the cold, if they intelligently planned for long life, 
rather than give up to a feeling of hopeless fate. 
The Eskimos, as we know, are not intelligent liv- 
ers, and as a result they are likely to pass away 
along with the aborigines of the whole of the 
north and northwest of the Continent of America. 
In a sense this is a sad fate, but this ''great world'' 
of ours is constantly exhibiting examples of the 
weaker and less intelligent disappearing, while the 
stronger and better races are gaining domination. 



REINDEER-LAND 97 

It IS the order of Nature; it is the necessary re- 
sult of the march of human events. One day all 
these various classes of people will have gone and 
left scarcely a mark behind. 

Many believe, and we concur in that belief, that 
at most the Lapps of two or three centuries will 
be classed among the ancient Cave-men, who have 
disappeared from the earth. Whether other races 
will venture to live where they now do, and follow 
the life they now lead, no one may predict. 

The wild reindeer has also been disappearing 
from the country and from Norway and Sweden 
proper, but this is owing to the huntsmen. The 
tame reindeer, however, holds its own, and there 
is no human reason, unless it be a lack of moss- 
food, of which there is at present no sign, why it 
may not hold on for a long period after the Lapps 
go, as It was in the Northland before the Lapps 
ever reached that region. 

The fact that the Lapp may go furnishes at 
least one reason why our interest in this curious 
race should be more than a passing one. He is an 
anomaly in his habits and ambitions, a strange 
successor to the Bone and Cave-men, who pre- 
ceded him in Scandinavia, and, if the years be not 
long before he is as unknown to us as arc those 
of his predecessors in Reindeer-land, all the more 
should one study his customs, render him the aid 
that Christian religion dictates, and admit that, if 
he be uncivilized in some respects, he is at least 
our brother and a man with a soul. 



98 REINDEER-LAND 

NOTES ON THE TEXT. 

^Page 9. A Summer in Norway^ by Judge 
John Dean Caton, LL. D., Chicago, 1875. 

^Page 10. Du Chaillu, in his Land of the 
Midnight Sun, states the area of Lapland as 33,- 
000 square miles, but he is clearly in error. 

^Page 57. Kalevala was the ancient name of 
Finland. The ancient Finns loved music and song 
even more than the modern Finns, and their songs, 
or runes, as sung by the v^inter fireside, were of- 
ten accompanied by a harp of five strings. In 1835 
a native, Elias Lonnrot, made a collection of 23,- 
000 verses, after traveling over the country and 
searching the libraries, and this forms the great 
Kalevala epic. It is a most interesting fact that 
Longfellow patterned his Hiazvatha after this 
epic. 

^Page 59. Odin, in Norse mythology, was 
originally the god of the air. He was chief god 
— the all-Father, as it were. Thor was the god 
of Nature ; of the thunderbolt, of agriculture, etc. 
Odin was the same as Woden in early English 
mythology, where he was considered as god of 
the wind and of battle. Odin went with the early 
Vikings to fight; Thor rather ^^remained at 
home," and worked out the processes of the wild- 
er phenomena of Nature. All the Teutonic na- 
tions worshiped Odin; the Norsemen and Danes 
were more exclusive in their attachment to Thor. 

sPage 85. See Report of Introduction of Do- 
mestic Reindeer into Alaska, 1903 made by Dr. 
Sheldon Jackson to the United States Govern- 



REINDEER-LAND 99 

ment, p. 26. Congress began to appropriate 
money for the introduction of reindeer into Alas- 
ka in 1894. ^t the end of 1903, it had appropri- 
ated $158,000 for that purpose, and there were 
then in Alaska 6,505 reindeer, in eleven herds, 
which were cared for by eighty-one Eskimos and a 
number of Lapps. 



BEST WORKS IN ENGLISH 
ON THE LAPPS. 

Du Chaillu, P. B. "Land of the Midnight 
Sun." 2 vols., Nev^^ York, 1881. 

Vincent, Frank. "Norsk, Lapp and Finn." 
London, 188 1. 

Hyne, C. J. "Through Arctic Lapland." 
London, 1898. 

Rae, Edward. "The White Sea Peninsula." 
London, 188 1. 



■ ofC. 



lOO 



REINDEER-LAND 



INDEX TO CONTENTS. 



Arctic Circle, lo, 22, 64 

Aurora Borealis, 87 

Bear-hunting, 68 

Bicycle of reindeer bone. 82 

Byron, 50 

Caribou, 8 

Churches, 60 

Coffee, serving, 37 

Dalecarlia, 20 

Dogs, 40 

Drotningholm, 85 

Drunkenness, 52 

Du Chaillu, 29, 46 

Dwellings, 38 

Finnish-Lapland, 10, 14 

Game and Birds, 65 

Gellivara, 22 

Gods, 59 

Gustaf Vasa, 21 

Gustavus Adolphus, 21 

Hammarby, 19 

Kalevala, 57 

Kiruna, 24 

Language, 56 

Lapland, berries, 42; country 
and climate, 61; dogs, 40; 
entering, 22: express, 18; 
game and birds, 65; how 
to reach, 16; mountains, 
62; timepieces, 49; trees 
in, 62; twilights, 65; very 
old, 12; wild flowers, 63; 
winter. 27, 64 

Lapps, affections, 50; appear- 
ance, 26; character, 52, 61; 
classes, 55; dress. 44; 
drunkenness, 52; dwell- 
ings, 23; early, 13; en- 
campment. 30; end of, 96; 
food, 42; inter-marriage. 
50; language, 56; mar- 
riages, 53; religion, 58; 



sheath-knives, 44; tents, 
35; use tobacco, 48 

Lofoten Islands, 25 

Magnetic pole, 87 

Malmberget, 23 

Marriages, 53 

Martin, Pierre, 89 

Midnight Sun, 17, 22, 92 

Missionaries, 60 

Mora Stones, 19 

Nansen, 90 

Narvik, 24, 25 

Norrland, 21 

Ohthere, 14 

Otschon, 51 

Peary, Lieutenant, 90 

Pemmican, 44 

Pictet, 85 

Proctor, Richard, 89 

Reindeer, branded, 75; cari- 
bou, 73; color, 74; driving, 
83; hardiness, 75; killing, 
82; land, where it is, 10; 
meat, 43; milking, 75; 
moss, 75; number, 75, 10; 
saddles, 36; size, etc., 73; 
uses of, 82 

Religion, 58 

Russian-Lapland, 10 

St. Nicholas, 6 

Sala, 20 

Serchthift, 15 

Sledges, 83 

Snow-shoes, 70, 71 

Stockholm, 17 

Sulitelma, 62 

Sweden, forests, 21 

Swedish-Lapland, 22, 34 

Tacitus, 12, 16 

Tornea, 17 

Upsala, 19, 20 



H 6^ ^°. ^^- 














40 










'"5 ->^ 







■ o' 











-^O ^ ♦•no* .-0,^ O. 








"^^P^. ^^ o II o ^ ^^^^ ^ ^ >^ ♦ • f Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce 







2002 



Treatment Date: AUG 

^ ^' PreservationTechnologii 

' .i' ' ■■ 



-. -V* A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATI 



♦ ^ 



111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 









^^.^^ 



J-. ^.^^ ^^ 

.0 ,.^.JS?w'. o 



^o 





'^.♦i:i.% 



















<^» ' • II O ' ,-»» C 













lECKMAN 

IINDERY INC. 

^JAN 90 

■E|^ N. MANCHESTER, 
^^#^ INDIANA 46962 






